Over 1,000 Brooklyn artists receive investment through City Artist Corps Grants!
Last year, Brooklyn Arts Council was delighted to be one of 16 organizations to partner on the City Artist Corps Grants program, a historic initiative that distributed over $15 million to NYC based-artists disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. In total, over 3,000 artists working in a wide range of disciplines received one-time grants of $5,000 to help sustain their practice and share their work publicly once again, resulting in a summer of vibrant creative activity across all five boroughs.
A total of 1,043 artists in Brooklyn received City Artist Corps grants and over 44% of the total awardees were in Brooklyn zip codes identified as being most impacted by COVID-19.
As part of our mission to foster a joyful, thriving, and equitable Brooklyn, we are delighted to expand the ways we represent the artists working in our borough and see our parks, venues, streets, and public spaces animated with free performances and artistic engagements. Local communities and audiences were brought together to safely connect after being apart for so long, reminding us that arts, culture, and a robust arts workforce is essential to healthy and flourishing communities.
Local Brooklyn artist Jamie Courville received a grant for a storefront multi-channel video installation Gowanus Torrent and shared her sentiment on the impact of the additional support, “Not only did the grant allow me to create the installation, which I have always wanted to do, it allowed me to share parts of my film with the public. I was able to pay myself and my team, and actually get the materials I needed to make the piece the way I wanted it. It definitely helped my wallet and brain during the pandemic.”
Click here to find out more about City Artist Corps artists and their work.
City Artist Corps Grants was launched in June 2021 by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theatre.
Image: NeON Arts: Beautify NYC. Source: NYC Department of Culture Affairs. Photo by Michaela Muserra.