Three Louisville nonprofit arts organizations were among 1,023 nationally to earn funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the federal agency announced last week. The grants, totaling over $74 million nationally, are part of the NEA’s Art Works and State & Regional Partnerships programs.
Louisville’s grants go to:
Clifton Center
$15,000
According to the NEA:
To support Louisville Heritage Project. The center will present a series of concerts featuring cultural traditions from the U.S. and around the world. Community engagement activities such as in-school performances, film screenings, and lectures will complement the concerts. Performers may include NEA National Heritage Fellows Eddie Pennington, the Holmes Brothers, and Michael Doucet.
Kentucky Center for the Arts
$15,000
According to the NEA:
To support Integration of the Arts and Literacy. The project is a professional development program for arts teachers and teachers of literacy, reading, and English language arts from rural, urban, and suburban Kentucky schools. Teachers will learn to integrate music, dance, drama, and visual arts with creative writing and interactive storytelling based on children’s books. Books will be selected based on the potential for integration with the arts. The strategies learned will provide pathways for teachers and their students to create their own works of art inspired by the children’s literature.
University of Louisville
$15,000
According to the NEA:
To support a study of the relationship between theater engagement and self-reported levels of psychosocial well-being among older patrons of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. The researchers will conduct a cross-sectional survey of adult audiences and a focus group of audience members aged 60 years and older. A third component of the study involves tracking a cohort of older subscribers for two theatrical seasons, to learn whether they experience gains in positive affect from pre- to post-performance, and whether those gains predict psychological “flourishing” among older subscribers.
But is Louisville leaving money on the table? There’s significant opportunity for others in Louisville to nab some of this federal funding. For instance, New Orleans had 15 funded groups, Nashville had 10, and Indianapolis had 8 groups receive funding. We know Louisville has the high-caliber sorts of arts organizations that could benefit from these funds, so mark your calendars for upcoming grant application deadlines.
View the full list of grants here.
