Twenty-four arts and cultural projects have been awarded project funding as part of Imagine Greater Louisville 2020: An Arts and Cultural Vision to Transform the Region (IGL 2020). In August 2017, the IGL 2020 Steering Committee announced $500,000 in funding from Metro Louisville and the Jennifer Lawrence Arts Fund at the Fund for the Arts (JLAF) to implement the strategies of the community plan and opened a call for proposals.
One-hundred-and-eighty-seven proposals were submitted totaling $4.4 million in requests. The 24 unique projects awarded grants will impact residents in every Metro District in Jefferson County through a wide variety of art forms.
Projects range from a sensory-friendly production of Hamlet at Western Middle School for the Arts and an artist refugee program with Kentucky Refugee Ministries to a new public concert series through the Louisville Federation of Musicians.
Fund for the Arts stewarded the launch of IGL 2020 in spring of 2017 to provide a shared vision for the role arts, culture, and creativity can play in helping the region grow while addressing vital community issues. Each awarded project addresses one or more of the five key strategies of IGL 2020: Access, Education, Cultivation, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, and Promotion. Of the 24 proposals funded, 18 focus specifically on at-risk neighborhoods, 16 directly on engaging youth, and six with specific populations.
The review process of the 187 grants submitted by arts organizations, non-profits, schools, partnerships, and individual artists included two levels of assessment as well as the opportunity for public comment. Twenty-two local arts and civic leaders conducted the first round of review with each submission receiving a score from at least three reviewers. Reviewers from peer cities (Nashville, Lexington, and Cincinnati) then reviewed the proposals that scored in the top half of the total group of submissions.
2017 Grant Recipients:
Discover Drama—Resilience, Bellewood School – $4,810
Fiber Arts Community in South Louisville, The Lou Tate Foundation
d.b.a. The Little Loomhouse – $3,385
Peacebuilding and Community Strengthening through Art, Side by Side Studio, Inc. – $5,000
Explore More, Play Cousins Collective – $3,126
LaCucarachita Children’s Production, Teatro Tercera Llamada – $4,900
20th Annual Louisville Jewish Film Festival, Jewish Community of Louisville, Inc. – $4,800
Seven Generations, Bridge Kids International – $5,000
Best Practices in Access and Inclusion: Sensory-Friendly HAMLET, Western Middle School for the Arts – $3,840
Communities of Iroquois, Louisville Story Program – $7,500
Puppet Hero Parade, Squallis Puppeteers – $20,075
Taking Art in a New Direction, Louisville Visual Art – $17,650
Project Ready: LYRICS, Louisville Urban League – $10,000
Mixing Matters, Rhythm Science Sound – $15,450
Louisville Cultural Accessibility Association, Kentucky Center for the Arts Foundation – $11,650
Sarabande Writing Labs, Sarabande Books, Inc. – $8,850
Relevance to the Present. Discovering Slave Narratives. Understanding Ourselves. Portia White – $10,750
The G.A.P Cultivation Program and Documentary, The Gap Felony Prevention Program – $24,933
We Create: Artists and Refugees Celebrate Making Louisville Home, Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Inc. – $20,522
Imagine 2020 Concert Series, Louisville Federation of Musicians – $10,000
Capacity Building & Program Launch, ELEVATOR Artist Resource – $20,000
Producing Art In Neighborhoods Together Open Call, Center For Neighborhoods – $20,000
Portraits of Pride, William M. Duffy, Sculptor – $11,700
Music Together, Yani Vozos – $15,800
K-8 Arts Integration Teacher Leadership Team, Academic Services/Jefferson County Public Schools – $22,862
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