The Next Deadline:

The Fund received 194 letters of inquiry in response to its December 3 deadline for projects featuring media artists or performing artists. Letters were read by committees of reviewers and the Fund has invited 59 projects to submit detailed proposals by April 20.

In 2012-13, the Creative Work Fund is inviting projects featuring traditional artists or visual artists. The deadline is not yet set because the Fund is seeking renewed funding from its generous supporters. Interested artists and nonprofits should sign up through “Join Now” to receive the deadline announcement.

News from funded projects (for details visit,
“What’s New”)

Home Page News: May 2012

Raeshma Razvi's online short film, "On Doing."

• Through June 24, Filoli Gardens’ 14th annual Botanical Art Exhibit includes a work by Claudia Stevens’ “The Mutsun Project”

• Raeshma Razvi has released online the short film, “On Doing,” part of her “Travels with H” series, a collaboration with the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California

• May 9, 6-8 p.m., Kathleen Smith discusses springtime foods of native California at Heyday, 1633 University Avenue, Berkeley

• July 28 and 29, The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music premieres The Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra, a collaboration with Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson (The Kitchen Sisters)

For details about the above events, visit, “What’s New”

 

Creative Work Fund Awards $661,000
to Northern California Artists

18 Exceptional Projects Awarded Grants for Literary and Traditional Arts

The Creative Work Fund (CWF) is pleased to announce that it is awarding 18 grants totalling $661,000 to Northern California artists for the creation of new works in the fields of literary and traditional arts. Each artist has collaborated with a local nonprofit community organization on dynamic and creative projects that will create books, multimedia pieces, exhibitions, podcasts, Pomo regalia, silkscreen prints, and performances of spoken word, dance, and choral and instrumental music.

“An exciting dimension of this year’s grant awards is the wide variety of organizations that have recognized how working closely with artists will advance their goals,” said CWF director Frances Phillips, who has been heading the fund since its establishment in 1994. “It’s common for cultural and educational organizations to understand this; but this year we’ve also seen nonprofits working in the areas of AIDS awareness, legal rights, refugee resettlement, and community development recognizing how artists and art making can help strengthen vulnerable communities.”

For the 2011 grant cycle, CWF reviewed projects in the literary and traditional arts, with successful applicants working in highly diverse media. The selected literary artists will be creating work for online and theatrical presentation, as books, exhibits, and performances.  The selected traditional artists represent traditions from Cambodia, Ghana, Iran, Mexico, and the Philippines—as well as regional traditions of Native Californians and Asian Americans.

Since 1994, CWF has contributed $8.6 million to advance art-making by Northern California artists in a variety of disciplines. Awards range from $10,000 to $40,000. Grants are highly competitive and recommended to CWF by a committee of accomplished panelists.

The 2011 CWF grant recipients come from the Bay Area’s urban centers, extending out to Modesto and Salinas. Recipient artists are renowned in their disciplines, and have undergone a rigorous and intensely competitive review process. Please click here for more information.

 

Filmmaker Sam Ball and The Jewish Theatre co-founder Corey Fischer collaborated to create a new play with cinematic elements, In the Maze of Our Own Lives, based on the history of the Group Theater (1931-41). The country’s first modern ensemble theatre, the Group also was the first theatre in the United States to present work in which large numbers of previously unrepresented Americans could recognize themselves in the characters portrayed.  For the first time the language of immigrants, of taxi drivers and schoolteachers was heard on stage.  The Group broke down barriers of class and ethnicity, and dispensed with an exhausted set of conventions to discover new ways of being on stage that matched the intensity of the changing world around them. 

Project Title: In the Maze of Our Own Lives
Recipient Organization: The Jewish Theatre San Francisco
Lead Artists: Sam Ball & Corey Fischer
Genre and Date Awarded:  Media Arts, July 2009
To be Premiered/Completed:  October 2011

The collaborators worked closely through a series of improvisational workshops to develop the script and determine in what ways the cinematic elements would be incorporated. The writer, Corey Fischer refined the script following each workshop and Sam Ball then created, designed, produced, acquired, and edited the video elements for the work, including original material and archival footage.

Sam Ball recently collaborated with the Jewish Museum of New York on the multi-media exhibit, Marc Chagall and the Artists of Russian-Jewish Theater. His films include Pleasures of Urban Decay (on Ben Katchor), Joann Sfar Draws from Memory, and Balancing Act.

This season, which will be TJT’s last, is the company’s 34th year of creating, producing, and presenting more than 40 original works of theatre.  In 1990, TJT was one of the first American theatres to tour post-Communist Eastern Europe.  Two of its original plays have been anthologized and the company has won many awards, including the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award and a lifetime achievement award from the Foundation for Jewish Culture.  In 1994 the company shifted from being primarily a touring company to producing plays in its own theatre in San Francisco.