Grant Projects Designed to Expand Access to Arts Participation in Communities Nationwide

Urbana, IL — The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC) is excited to announce that it has received  an ArtsHERE grant of $112,400 as part of a new pilot program from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with South Arts and in collaboration with the other five U.S. Regional Arts Organizations. These grants support specific projects that will strengthen the organizations’ capacity to sustain meaningful community engagement and increase arts participation for underserved groups and communities. The NEA awarded only 112 of these grants across the country.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is thrilled to provide resources to a group of exceptional organizations through ArtsHERE, a program to help deepen meaningful and lasting arts engagement in underserved communities,” said Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Everyone should be able to live an artful life, and ArtsHERE is an important step in ensuring we are strengthening our nation’s arts ecosystem to make this a reality.”

Historically underserved groups and communities—those whose opportunities to experience the arts have been limited by factors such as geography, race or ethnicity, economics, or disability—frequently report lower rates of participation in various arts activities than other groups do. ArtsHERE aims to address disparities in arts participation through grants that help organizations better serve and reach their communities. 

The UCIMC has long played a role in incubating creative projects. As the crisis surged in 2020 with the multiple pandemics of COVID-19, racial injustice, and climate change, we collaborated with the office of Representative Carol Ammons to imagine an incubator for minority-led projects. In 2021, the UCIMC was awarded $700,000 from the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for this project and supported seven organizations to level up or launch their organizations. 

We continue to work with community artists, leaders, and organizers with creative solutions to our community’s problems. The NEA grant will allow us to carry out a strategic planning process that will build our leadership capacity at the intersection of art, media, and community-building. 

The process will begin with public workshops that share key strategies and stories from the UCIMC’s 25-year history of cultural organizing. Then a group of local artists, community leaders and media-makers will be selected to develop the strategic tools that have emerged through UCIMC’s history. Finally, staff will compile a five-year strategic plan for the organization with programmatic goals for 2026 through 2031. UCIMC Executive Director Miriam Larson said, “we’re honored to receive this grant which comes as we sit on the cusp of our 25th anniversary. We’re grateful to the NEA for the support to reflect, plan and grow with intention.”

“We are very excited to work with these organizations on their projects,” said Susie Surkamer, president and CEO of South Arts. “The arts are essential to the fabric of our nation, and at the heart of this necessity are the organizations and individuals who champion them. Through ArtsHERE, we are excited to continue expanding and enriching the arts landscape both nationally and within these unique local communities.”

In addition to grant awards, ArtsHERE grant recipients will also participate in quarterly peer learning workshops, monthly cohort sessions, and one-on-one meetings with technical assistance coaches and field experts. These meetings are designed for knowledge sharing, learning, and capacity-building, to help reinforce the initiative’s opportunities for cross-sector engagement.

As a pilot program, ArtsHERE will be documented and evaluated by the NEA to better understand the project activities supported by this program and how grantees approached the work. These insights may inform the future of ArtsHERE and similar funding programs in the future.

More than 4,000 organizations applied for ArtsHERE funding in late 2023 and early 2024. Applications were reviewed by multiple review panels based on published review criteria, including the applicant’s organizational capacity and their capacity-building project, alignment with ArtsHERE’s commitment to equity, and engagement with historically underserved communities. The selected organizations will receive funding to support their projects, which will take place between October 2024 through June 2026. For more information on all of the ArtsHERE recommended grants, visit artsHERE.org.

ArtsHERE is also supported by The Wallace Foundation through matching funds to the Regional Arts Organizations in support of this program.