Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) has been approved for a $40,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support the development and implementation of workshops and tools to help artist residency programs assess and build their equitable capacity. This project includes a series of targeted workshops to tackle critical gaps in equitable practice, and the field-wide adoption of a residency self-assessment tool, ACA’s Five Pillars of a Healthy Residency.
Equitable Capacity, a concept coined by ACA’s Executive Director Lisa Funderburke Hoffman in 2020, refers to the strengthening of an organization’s “muscle” to be equitable in policies, practices, and processes. The Strengthening Your Equitable Capacity Workshop Series was piloted in 2021 in response to common challenges among artist residency programs and targets five key areas of organizational health: Identity, Program Design, Stewardship, Resource Development, and Operational Excellence.
Grounded in goals and values outlined in ACA’s 2021-2023 Strategic Plan, this initiative will provide tactical strategies for program evaluation, equitable jury and selection models, staffing protocols and other key areas of residency operations. Workshops, running in tandem with continuous meta-network and field conversations, will foster a culture of inquiry, reflection, transparency and change.
ACA’s project is among 1,248 projects across the United States - totaling $28,840,000 in awards - that were selected to receive this first round of fiscal year 2022 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects category. ACA congratulates the following member and partner programs approved for Grants for Arts Projects awards in the Artist Communities category:
|
3Arts |
Kala Art Institute |
For more information on other projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
ACA will announce 2022 programming soon. If you are interested in participating in upcoming Strengthening Your Equitable Capacity workshops or other learning opportunities, sign up for our newsletter.
You can read the press release here.