National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu announced 89 awards totaling $6.89 million supporting projects across the nation through the NEA’s Our Town program. National Arts Strategies (NAS) is one of the recommended organizations for a grant of $75,000 to support the Creative Community Fellows program. The NEA received 274 eligible applications for Our Town this year and will make grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000.
“The arts reflect the vision, energy, and talent of America’s artists and arts organizations,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support organizations such as National Arts Strategies, to cultivate vitality in their communities through the arts.”
Creative Community Fellows supports creative placemaking entrepreneurs from communities throughout the US by giving them access to transformational tools and networks. Through the support of the NEA’s Our Town program, NAS is developing new Creative Community Fellows curriculum. NAS will partner with Local Initiatives Support Corporation to develop new online resources on arts and community development. Together, with faculty from Northwestern University and University of Oregon, NAS will develop a session to support Fellows in leveraging their networks and developing healthy cross-sector partnerships.
“We are honored to be an NEA Our Town grantee. This award allows us to further support our amazing group of Fellows and create online resources that are available to the entire field,” says Creative Community Fellows program director, Sunny Widmann.
For a complete list of projects recommended for Our Town grant support, please visit the NEA website at arts.gov. The NEA recently relaunched the creative placemaking web page which has lots of resources.
To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring17.
