2002 Grant Awards: Challenge America Arts Access Grants

Some details of the projects listed below are subject to change, contingent upon prior Endowment approval.

DANCE

African American Dance Ensemble, Inc. (consortium)
Durham, NC
$50,000
To support a series of community residencies. The project will include a variety of activities and a performance. Consortium members include the Ashe County Arts Council, the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, St. John's Museum of Art, the Arts Council of Wilson, the United Arts Council of Raleigh and the YMI Cultural Center.

Caribbean Dance Company of the Virgin Islands, Inc.
St. Croix, VI
$30,000
To support the 2002 Caribbean Dance Axis. The project will provide performances for public daycare centers, elementary schools, universities, school parents and senior citizens.

Dance Alive!, Inc.
Gainesville, FL
$25,000
To support expansion of touring in rural and underserved areas in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. The dance programs will include work by resident choreographers, George Balanchine, and commissioned work by contemporary choreographers.

Eugene Ballet Company
Eugene, OR
$30,000
To support regional rural touring in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. The tour will consist of performances and outreach programs and will reach rural communities.

Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, Inc.
Cazenovia, NY
$30,000
To support the presentation of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in rural, upstate New York. The open rehearsal, evening performance, and lecture demonstration will be targeted to low-income rural and urban participants, particularly at-risk children and youth.

DESIGN

City of Chicago, Illinois
(on behalf of Mayor's Office of Special Events)
Chicago, IL
$25,000
To support the Arts for Great Chicago Places and Spaces: A Celebration of Chicago Architecture. The Mayor's Office of Special Events in Chicago initiated an architecture festival in 1999 that provides more than 100 free architectural and design tours to more than 5,000 Chicagoans and visitors over two days.

City University of New York City College (consortium)
New York, NY
$80,000
To support a strategic planning process for the Harlem Heights Heritage Area, including pilot sites, cultural tourism, educational programming and economic revitalization. City College Architectural Center has been assisting the West Harlem Art Fund with efforts to establish a New York State Heritage Area in northern Manhattan.

Cornerstones Community Partnerships
Santa Fe, NM
$25,000
To support the creation of a virtual 3-D architectural model and a native language retention project for the San Esteban del Ray Mission and mesa. Currently 500,000 people annually visit the mission and mesa and the virtual model and associated historical documentation will allow even larger audience access via the Internet.

FOLK & TRADITIONAL ARTS

Ballet Folklorico Ollin, Inc. (on behalf of Mariachi Los Camperos)
Panorama City, CA
$25,000
To support a tour of Fiesta Navidad to the rural San Joaquin, Antelope and Imperial Valleys of California. Fiesta Navidad is a concert of mariachi music and folklorico dancing that tells the Christmas story of La Posada, a Mexican tradition marking the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

Eastern Maine Development Corporation (consortium)
Bangor, ME
$80,000
To support the National Folk Festival. The festival will connect cultural groups to their own heritage while providing rural Maine with access to high quality performances and material culture. Consortium members include the National Council for the Traditional Arts and the Bangor Convention and Visitor's Bureau.

Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA
$30,000
To support the traveling exhibition Hitemelkil'isix (Within the Circle of the Rim), with an accompanying catalogue. The exhibition will showcase artwork of the first U. S.-based Gathering of Indigenous Visual Artists of the Pacific Rim.

Fresno Arts Council (consortium)
Fresno, CA
$25,000
To support production of a full color quarterly publication entitled Living Cultures: A Magazine of California Arts & Community. Each issue will contain an events calendar highlighting traditional arts events, including the California Indian Basketweavers annual gathering, and ethnic celebrations such as the Hmong New Year.

KanKouran West African Dance Company
Washington, DC
$25,000
To support the 19th Annual Labor Day Conference and Concert. The project involves five days of West African dancing, drumming and cultural art workshops concluding with a self-produced concert.

Montana Committee for the Humanities
Missoula, MT
$50,000
To support the third annual Montana Festival of the Book in September 2002. More than 100 regional authors will read and discuss their work at selected venues in downtown Missoula, reaching an estimated audience of up to 5,000.

LITERATURE

National Book Foundation, Inc.
New York, NY
$50,000
To support literary outreach programs that link National Book Award authors with underserved communities throughout the country. Programs include American Voices, which brings writers to American Indian reservations nationwide, and a Summer Writing Camp for inner-city teens and adults.

Poets & Writers, Inc. (consortium)
New York, NY
$45,000
To support Carried Voices: Writers & Books in the West, a program to increase access to established writers in rural communities throughout Washington, Oregon and Montana. The program will develop a new model for writers' residencies and more effectively link publishers, presenters and audiences outside of major urban centers. Consortium members include the Western States Arts Federation, Mountain Writers Center (Portland, OR), The Writers Voice of the Billings, Montana Family YMCA, and the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library.

Texas A&M Research Foundation
College Station, TX
$40,000
To support Writing the Self and Community, a series of public readings and writing workshops organized by the journal Callaloo to be held at historically black colleges and universities around the country. Writers will visit Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA; Xavier University in New Orleans, LA; Fisk University in Nashville, TN; and Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD.

LOCAL ARTS AGENCIES

Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies
Columbia, MO
$25,000
To support the Rural Initiative. The project will develop arts programs in rural communities and provide services to isolated artists through an on-line artist directory, a rural touring roster, and technical assistance.

Scottsdale Cultural Council
Scottsdale, AZ
$50,000
To support an artist residency program in the Salt River and Gila River Pima/Maricopa Indian communities. The residency program will provide an opportunity for local and national artists to work with tribal children in elementary and secondary schools.

MEDIA ARTS

Downtown Community Television Center, Inc.
New York, NY
$30,000
To support the CyberStudio for the Arts Residency Program and Video Training Workshops Program. Downtown Community Television is devoted to making technologically sophisticated media available to underserved communities by providing a range of courses.

Jack Straw Memorial Foundation (consortium)
Seattle, WA
$25,000
To support the Blind Youth and Adult Audio Project. With Arts and Visually Impaired Audiences, the series of workshops introduces visually impaired people to the creative possibilities and latest techniques of audio production while they design their own radio program.

L.A. Theatre Works
Venice, CA
$50,000
To support the distribution of two audio plays to 2,500 underserved public secondary schools and 700 public libraries, including those for the blind or visually impaired. In addition, L.A. Theatre Works will provide the organizations with promotional materials to augment the collection.

New Orleans Video Access Center, Inc.
New Orleans, LA
$25,000
To support the provision of workshops and production equipment for media artists and students. The New Orleans Video Access Center offers, at greatly reduced rates, access to training and sophisticated production facilities for artists to create new work.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Alternate ROOTS, Inc.
Atlanta, GA
$60,000
To support networking, communication and audience development programs. The project will provide services that will enable geographically isolated artists and presenters to reach broader audiences.

Pat Graney Performance, Inc.
Seattle, WA
$50,000
To support the national expansion of Keeping the Faith - the Prison Project. Through this residency program, artists in three U.S. cities will be trained to create their own arts programming in prisons.

Sheboygan Arts Foundation, Inc.
(on behalf of John Michael Kohler Arts Center)
$60,000
Sheboygan, WI
To support Connecting Communities. This series of five community-based residencies will facilitate collaborations between visual and performing artists and the Hmong and Hispanic communities, youth at-risk, industrial employees, and elderly audiences from Sheboygan County.

VSA arts of Washington
Seattle, WA
$40,000
To support the Cultural Access Project of Washington State. The project will serve people with disabilities by assisting in the evaluation and education of arts organizations that seek to incorporate access into all facets of their facilities and programming.

Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, Inc.
Camden, NJ
$45,000
To support the expansion of the artist residency and workshop program. Up to ten recognized community teaching artists and local artists will work with underserved city residents.

MUSEUMS

Asheville Art Museum Association, Inc.
Asheville, NC
$25,000
To support the Literacy Through Art (LTA) program. LTA delivers art programs to students in the Appalachian region of North Carolina including lessons led by visual and performing artists and visits to the Asheville Art Museum.

Mid-America Arts Alliance (on behalf of ExhibitsUSA)
Kansas City, MO
$30,000
To support the tour of the exhibition Whispers from the Walls: The Art of Whitfield Lovell. ExhibitsUSA will develop educational and programming materials to accompany the exhibition as well as provide lecture and shipping subsidies to assist underserved communities.

Museum of Photographic Arts
San Diego, CA
$30,000
To support the Regeneration Project, a 16-week collaborative creative process involving senior citizens and local artists. Working with professional photographers, actors, composers, designers and arts educators, the seniors participating in the project will experiment with a variety of artistic processes to write, direct and present a multimedia performance piece.

Northwestern Michigan College (consortium)
(on behalf of Dennos Museum Center)
$25,000
Traverse City, MI
To support a touring exhibition of European Old Master paintings from the Detroit Institute of Arts, with accompanying catalogue and education programs. The exhibition will feature 35 outstanding examples of Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian and British paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Texas Fine Arts Association
Austin, TX
$25,000
To support Art on Tour, a statewide traveling exhibition program with accompanying catalogues and lectures. The program circulates exhibitions of contemporary art by emerging and mid career American artists to small museums and university and community galleries throughout Texas, many in rural, culturally underserved communities.

University of Oregon (on behalf of Museum of Art) (consortium)
Eugene, OR
$30,000
To support the Art Access Program in partnership with the Lane Arts Council. The project is to disseminate art and cultural instruction to students who have limited exposure to the arts due to geographic and financial constraints.

MUSIC

Arcady Music Society
Bar Harbor, ME
$25,000
To support a rural tour by musicians of the Arcady Summer Music Festival. Chamber ensembles together with other musicians will travel to six underserved communities of Maine. During each of the six weeks of the summer festival, artists will tour to a different rural community in inland Maine.

Meet The Composer, Inc.
New York, NY
$100,000
To support the Composer Connections Initiative designed to increase the impact contemporary music has on listeners. The components of the initiative, the Meet the Composer Fund and New Residencies, embrace complementary approaches to cultivating relationships between composers and communities.

Minnesota Orchestral Association (consortium)
Minneapolis, MN
$75,000
To support a statewide tour of concerts and educational activities. In addition to concerts, the seven-day tour in April 2003 to five cities in Minnesota will include community and school-based workshops. Consortium member is the Perpich Center for Arts Education.

Nashville Symphony Association
Nashville, TN
$25,000
To support outreach concerts to rural areas of middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. The Nashville Symphony, in partnership with local community organizations, will tour to diverse and underserved communities.

Omaha Symphony Association
Omaha, NE
$25,000
To support a statewide tour targeting rural populations. The tour to more than 13 communities will also include educational activities for preschool through high school students at five of the locations.

Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center, Inc.
(on behalf of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra)
$60,000
Atlanta, GA
To support an educational and community partnership initiative. The components of the initiative include a four-day music institute for talented young musicians and a statewide tour to rural communities.

MUSICAL THEATER

Deaf West Theatre Company, Inc.
North Hollywood, CA
$30,000
To support the tour and production of professional deaf theater for new audiences in New York City. Deaf West Theatre Company will identify and secure a venue in New York to co-produce the musical production of Oliver! in American Sign Language.

Mad River Theater Works
West Liberty, OH
$30,000
To support the creation of a new play in collaboration with students and their families, school teachers, administrators, and members of the public and a tour of the production throughout Ohio and surrounding states. Participants will collaborate to create plays based on local history and folklore.

Paper Mill Playhouse
Millburn, NJ
$25,000
To support the Access Program for the Disabled. To ensure that all individuals may benefit from the performing arts, Paper Mill Playhouse has designed a program that includes services for the deaf and hearing impaired, and barrier-free access for the physically disabled.

Society of the Educational Arts, Inc.
New York, NY
$30,000
To support the New York productions and tour to Puerto Rico of children's theater in Spanish with accompanying workshops. Sociedad Educativa de las Artes' programs and performances preserve Latin American arts and culture through presentation of a repertory of Latin American children's classics and folk tales.

Theatreworks/USA Corporation
New York, NY
$50,000
To support a tour of productions to western states and Washington, DC. Theatreworks/USA will tour Ferdinand the Bull, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Freedom Train to over 280,000 young people and families in seven western states and Washington, DC during its 2002-03 season.

OPERA

Anchorage Opera Company
Anchorage, AK
$25,000
To support the Anchorage Opera Studio Theatre, a statewide touring young artist program to rural Alaskan schools and communities. In its third year in 2002-03, the program will provide development of young professional opera artists and expansion of the company's education and outreach activities to underserved communities including Alaska Native populations in Barrow, Kotzebue, Nome, Valdez and the Kenai Peninsula.

Houston Grand Opera Association, Inc.
Houston, TX
$75,000
To support the seventh year of the Community Connections Initiative. This model initiative demonstrates unique methods for developing new audiences for opera and will include free performances of a work by Puccini performed on the Multimedia Modular Stage at Houston's Miller Outdoor Theatre.

New Cleveland Opera Company
Cleveland, OH
$35,000
To support the Intergenerational Initiative. Using the company's core K-12 programs as a model, the initiative will reach an estimated 21,000 underserved persons.

Opera North
Hanover, NH
$25,000
To support a young audience performance of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and a touring scenes program. During the summer of 2002 a fully-staged and orchestrated matinee performance of the opera will be performed for youth and adults, and opera scenes will be toured to four different venues reaching youth in 18 school districts, and adults in Vermont and New Hampshire.

PRESENTING

Seattle International Children's Festival
Seattle, WA
$35,000
To support expansion of education and outreach programs. The Children's Festival will increase the number of educational activities in schools, programs for the general public, and satellite festival sites throughout Washington State.

THEATER

Arkansas Repertory Theatre Company
Little Rock, AR
$25,000
To support the presentation of free outdoor performances of a Shakespeare play. The production of The Tempest will be presented in state parks throughout the summer of 2002.

Big Apple Circus, Ltd.
New York, NY
$50,000
To support the Clown Care Unit program in which professional clown performers make bedside visits to hospitalized children around the country. Using juggling, mime, magic and music, Big Apple Circus clowns use classical circus arts to bring humor to acutely and chronically ill children and their parents.

Dallas Theater Center
Dallas, TX
$30,000
To support a theater touring program to serve audiences limited by disabilities, economic, cultural and/or educational constraints. Dallas Theater Center will tour an adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy Antigone to regional schools with underserved populations, juvenile detention centers, halfway houses and other community organizations.

Das Puppenspiel Puppet Theater, Inc.
Westfield, NY
$25,000
To support a multistate tour of plays for young audiences. Performances will feature a variety of performance styles including mime, mask and shadow puppets and will tour to performing arts centers, schools and museums.

Pasadena Playhouse State Theatre of California, Inc.
Pasadena, CA
$25,000
To support an audience development initiative through increased access opportunities for deaf and hearing impaired, and low-income individuals. The program will include signed performances, audio-described performances for the blind and visually impaired, and pay-what-you-can opportunities for individuals with limited financial resources.

Spanish Theatre Repertory Co.
New York, NY
$75,000
To support Teatro Acceso, a tour of theater works to students from underserved schools and Latino communities with limited access to the arts throughout the New York metropolitan, tri-state area, and the northeastern United States. Spanish Theatre Repertory Company will implement grassroots promotional efforts to reach the underserved communities.

VISUAL ARTS

Art Resources Transfer, Inc.
New York, NY
$57,000
To support the Distribution to Underserved Communities Program. The project will offer books, museum catalogues, videos and other material about contemporary art free to libraries across the nation with a special emphasis on rural and inner-city libraries.

Asian American Arts Centre, Inc.
New York, NY
$25,000
To support an intergenerational public art project, Stories of Chinatown, in an underserved community. Organized in collaboration with Elders Share the Arts, the program will bring Chinatown seniors together with high school youth to create artwork that will present the untold stories of this aging immigrant population in a permanent ceramic tile installation.

National Endowment for the Arts
webmgr@arts.endow.gov