The Surdna Foundation has announced a commitment of $13 million in support of artists of color working to advance racial justice in their communities.
The funds will be distributed through a regranting initiative to artists, artist collectives, and small nonprofit arts organizations in support of projects led by artists of color that envision and advance racially just systems and structures at the local level. Part of the foundation’s Thriving Cultures program, the initiative will fund about two hundred and sixty projects over three years, or up to eighty-seven projects a year.
To that end, the foundation will partner with eleven national and regional intermediary organizations, including those focused on addressing inequities in arts grantmaking in the U.S. South, forging local cross-sectoral partnerships between municipal governments and local arts nonprofits, and/or serving Latinx and Indigenous communities. The partner organizations are Alternate Roots (Atlanta), Community Aid & Development Corporation(Decatur, Georgia, in partnership with the City of Jackson, Mississippi), Creative Capital (New York City), the East Bay Community Foundation (Oakland, in partnership with the Akonadi Foundation and the City of Oakland), Hester Street (New York City), the Massachusetts College of Art & Design (Boston, in partnership with the City of Boston), the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures (San Antonio), the National Performance Network (New Orleans), NDN Collective (Rapid City, South Dakota), Threewalls (Chicago), and the Transforming Power Fund (Detroit).
“As communities across our nation work together to survive COVID-19, artists are uniquely positioned to help us imagine and build a more just future in which we all can thrive,” said Thriving Cultures program director F. Javier Torres. “We are proud to partner with organizations that provide direct, on-the-ground support and technical assistance to artists of color. Our artist regranting cohort invests in the leaders and communities most impacted by injustice because they bring the necessary lived experience, strategies, and creativity to realize racially just societies.”
Source: PND
