Rockefeller Foundation Announces 2012 New York City Cultural Innovation Fund Winners
Rockefeller Foundation Announces 2012 New York City Cultural Innovation Fund Winners
The Rockefeller Foundation has announced grants totaling nearly $3 million through its annual Cultural Innovation Fund to nonprofit organizations in New York City working to enrich the city's cultural life and help ensure the vitality of the city's creative sector.
Selected from a pool of nearly four hundred applicants, the sixteen New York City-based organizations will receive two-year grants ranging from $50,000 to $250,000. The winners of this year's Cultural Innovation Fund competition include Harvestworks, which will partner with the Industrial and Technology Assistance Corporation to turn artists' technological innovations into entrepreneurial ventures; the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, which received a grant to engage traditionally underserved communities by bringing arts programming into public housing; and the Laundromat Project, which will promote civic participation through partnerships with community organizations that organize art workshops in local coin-operated laundromats.
Other winners include ArtHome, which was awarded a grant to provide individual development accounts that encourage saving among artists; the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation, which will receive funding to present a cross-cultural performance series celebrating the musical legacy of the Bronx; and Word Above the Street, which is launching the Water Tank Project to raise awareness of and activate dialogue related to the global water crisis.
"The Rockefeller Foundation is thrilled to continue our tradition of supporting art and creativity right here in our hometown of New York City through the Cultural Innovation Fund," said Judith Rodin, the foundation's president. "As the creative sector continues to advance, we must be sure that this growth is sustainable and equitable so that all our cultural producers have the resources they need to continue to create innovative and thought-provoking work that challenges all of us to question and learn new things."
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