Mesa Arts Center Receives $75K Grant for Community Arts Initiative
Last week the National Endowment for the Arts announced that it would be awarding Mesa Arts Center an Our Town Project Grant for $75,000 in support of the Building a Network; Designing Our Community through Community-Driven Artist Residencies and Community Prototyping project.
“The variety and quality of these Our Town projects speaks to the wealth of creativity and diversity in our country,” said National Endowment for the Arts chairman Jane Chu. “Through the work of organizations such as Mesa Arts Center, NEA funding invests in local communities, helping people celebrate the arts wherever they are.”
Mesa Arts Center’s project is a two-year initiative that will employ two community-driven artists residencies to connect neighbors and allow them to explore area needs and challenges through artmaking.
“It is an exciting time in Mesa, and we are thrilled to employ this grant toward further investment and community engagement in the neighborhoods in and immediately south of downtown. We are eager to continue to build on the success of the Main Street Prototyping Festival and community residencies held in late 2017, and to work closely with our project partners (LISC, Mesa Urban Garden, NEDCO/A New Leaf, Artspace, Downtown Mesa Association and Ultimate Imaginations, Inc.) to engage our neighbors in prototyping solutions for our city center,” said arts and culture department director for City of Mesa and executive director for Mesa Arts Center Cindy Ornstein.
This award was one of 60 awarded totaling $4.1 million.
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