Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Announces 2007 Artists & Communities Grants
Over $250,000 Awarded in Support of 18 Residency Projects

Baltimore, MD –Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation announced today that it has awarded 18 grants totaling more than $250,000 through its Artists & Communities residencyprogram. The grants will support 24 artists who will spend approximately 718 days in communities throughout the mid-Atlantic region in 2007-2008.

Artists & Communities supports partnerships between visiting artists and nonprofit organizations engaged in community-based arts projects. The program supports residencies by visiting artists from the District of Columbia, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania at organizations located throughout the Foundation’s nine states and jurisdictions. The purpose of the program is to stimulate public participation in the arts and to support artists financially and creatively in their careers. The program encourages artists and host organizations to collaborate on projects that result in community involvement in the artistic process and support the creation of new work. The 2007 Artists & Communities projects will take place in the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Projects include a collaboration between choreographer David Parker, 15 inner-city elementary school drummers and Dance Alloy Theater in Pittsburgh, a youth film workshop at the University of the Virgin Islands, and an site-specific installation incorporating solar-powered sound elements in upstate New York, among others. A complete list of funded residencies can be downloaded here.

The 2007 grantees were chosen from a field of 52 applications. A panel of artists and arts professionals experienced in community-based practice reviewed submissions and recommended the 18 funded applications based on artistic excellence, quality of the proposed project, and organizational capacity, to implement the project successfully.

Artists & Communities 2007 is supported by funding from Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Heinz Endowments, The William Penn Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation celebrates and supports the wealth and diversity of the region’s arts resources and works to make those resources widely accessible both in the region and beyond.