2 major arts funders are shaping the future of the arts in Philadelphia

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

Today both the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia announced new rounds of funding,

The NEA has launched ArtsHERE, a funding initiative distributing $12 million nationally to local programs designed to foster community engagement in the arts. Two organizations in the Philadelphia area will receive $117,000 each: the Philadelphia Folklore Project, based in West Philadelphia, and Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educacion, in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Pew announced its annual round of funding totaling $10.2 million, some of which will be distributed as unrestricted operating funds to help organizations navigate post-pandemic sustainability. Called “Evolving Futures,” Pew will distribute $3.5 million to nine organizations to help chart their futures.

Much of Pew’s “Evolving Futures” money will go toward forging partnerships between arts organizations. Opera Philadelphia, for example, has started working with the Apollo Theater in New York City to commission new operas centering the African American experience. They previously developed the opera “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” about the jazz great. With $480,000 from Pew, Opera Philadelphia is looking to form similar partnerships elsewhere.

“The partnership with the Apollo, that was forged before I got here, is something that informed how we want to proceed and partner with organizations outside of the operatic firmament,” said Opera Philadelphia executive director Anthony Roth Costanzo. “To create art that’s more multifaceted.”

Philadelphia theater companies learned quickly during the pandemic that partnerships are the key to their survival after shutdown disruptions. Pew is focusing transitional funding onto four companies, including the Wilma Theater ($360,000) for developing replicable models for collaborating, as it has with Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, D.C. for the production of “My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion” earlier this year and “Comeuppance” to hit the stage next month.

Pew funding will help People’s Light and Theater ($480,000) turn its 7-acre campus in Malvern, Pennsylvania into a hub for a range of live arts and support the smaller Inis Nua Theatre Company ($186,000), presenting works from Ireland and United Kingdom, as it forms a partnership with another local company, Tiny Dynamite.

The Barnes Foundation on the Parkway will soon expand to operate the new Calder Gardens across the street, a museum dedicated to the work of Alexander Calder expected to open in 2025. The Pew is giving $480,000 toward that transition.

Another $480,000 is going to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to figure out how to optimize its Samuel M.V. Hamilton building on North Broad Street. Earlier this year, PAFA announced it will no longer offer a degree program, which will likely free up about 77,000 square feet of unused space. The organization plans to use its building as an arts hub.

“PAFA is in the process of winding down its degree-granting, academic programs, which will free up classrooms, studios and other maker spaces that can be utilized for collaborations and partnerships with regional arts and cultural organizations,” said Lisa Biagas, PAFA COO, in a statement. “PAFA’s staff and board are in the midst of scoping at how Academy spaces might be best utilized differently.”

The Asian Arts Initiative is receiving $360,000 to help determine how best to utilize its building on Vine Street, and the Historic Germantown coalition will be using its $232,800 grant to streamline and enhance its resource-sharing model among its members.

Pew is also funding several projects geared toward the 2026 semiquincentennial, including First Person Arts’ development of a new piece by documentary theater artist Anna Deavere Smith inspired by the nation’s 250th anniversary, and the development of a new piece of music for orchestra and voice about the promise and troubles of American democracy, to be performed at the Mann Center in Fairmount Park, the site of the original Centennial of 1876.

At the national level, the NEA created a new ArtsHERE funding stream to support programs that engaged populations historically underserved by the arts sector. In accordance with President Biden’s 2021 executive order to advance racial equity, ArtsHERE aims to “strengthen organizations’ capacity to sustain meaningful community engagement.”

“Everyone should be able to live an artful life,” said NEA chair Maria Rosario Jackson. “ArtsHERE is an important step in ensuring we are strengthening our nation’s arts ecosystem to make this a reality.”

Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educacion in Norristown, Pennsylvania will use its NEA funding to expand its online magazine, Revarte, into a digital and print quarterly. Revarte, now two years old, publishes essays, literature, artwork and films created by Latino and Hispanic people around Norristown.

CCATE director Obed Arango founded the organization 12 years ago to hear the stories of the immigrant community in Montgomery County.

“Many of the stories that are told about the immigrant community have been denigrating us,” said Arango, who immigrated from Mexico in 1999. “It is time to claim back the authority to express it in a way that we can tell who we are, using art and community journalism.”

Arango plans to use the NEA grant to literally give voice to the community: CCATE has secured a low-power FM radio license from the FCC to broadcast a signal in a roughly 5-mile radius of Norristown. With money from ArtsHERE, CCATE can put the equipment in place to start broadcasting, which is expected in 2025. It will be the only Hispanic public radio station in Montgomery County.

Arango will also use NEA funding to renovate its building on West Main Street to better host art exhibitions.

“The community is the protagonist,” he said. “The different knowledges and talents and capacities and experiences of the immigrant community have a tremendous power.”

The Philadelphia Folklore Project, which went under new leadership in December 2023 when Mia Kang became executive director, will use its $117,000 NEA grant to plan and implement a new programming model it is calling Community Curation, wherein PFP staff will follow the lead of artists and audiences.

Kang took over a reduced organization that was programming irregularly and without a staff. She said the NEA funding will allow her to establish a permanent community advisory board which will establish programming priorities.

“After several years of intermittent programming, this planning process will help increase our capacity and our community responsiveness,” said Kang in a statement. “This funding enables us to lay new foundations for rebuilding PFP.”

“A Community Curation model will shift the balance of power,” PFP said in a statement. “So that community members have clear avenues to propose and lead programs, and staff serve to support rather than direct.”