Nea Awards $20 Million In Grants
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced that it will award $20.4 million to 844 grants. The Arts Endowment will distribute $20,406,500 in this round of FY 2006 funding to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country, funding Access to Artistic Excellence grants as well as Literature Fellowships for individuals.
Access to Artistic Excellence grants support the creation and presentation of work in the disciplines of dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting, theater, and visual arts.
Projects include commissions, residencies, workshops, performances, exhibitions, publications, festivals, and professional development programs. Through this category, the NEA will fund 794 projects out of 1,353 eligible applications, for a total federal investment of $19,406,500.
Examples of projects supported by Access to Artistic Excellence grants include:
* Support for a 2006 presentation of the nations oldest African American community festival in Philadelphia, featuring local and international African American dancers, musicians, and performers.
* Support for Skybowl, a landscape installation by artist/architect Maya Lin, that is part of the Confluences consortium project taking place in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.
* Support for a consortium residency project in which GRAMMY award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer will present workshops and festivals for high school choruses, choir directors, and adult singers in California, Connecticut, and Minnesota.
Literature Fellowships are the Arts Endowment’s most direct investment in American creativity, encouraging the production of new work and allowing writers the time and means to write.
The agency received more than 900 applications for its Creative Writing Fellowships in Prose. Fifty writers will receive fellowships of $20,000 each, including creative nonfiction writer Margot Singer of Salt Lake City, Utah, and fiction writer Terence Cheng of New York, New York, who will use his award to travel to China and Japan to conduct research for a novel-in-progress.
