About Us What is the Creative Work Fund?The Creative Work Fund invites artists and nonprofit organizations to create new art works through collaborations. It celebrates the role of artists as problem solvers and the making of art as a profound contribution to intellectual inquiry and to the strengthening of communities. Artists are encouraged to collaborate with nonprofit organizations of all kinds. Four principles guide the Fund:
Creative Work Fund HistoryResponding to several years of declining support for artists and new art works, The Columbia Foundation, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Miriam and Peter Haas Fund, and Walter and Elise Haas Fund launched the Creative Work Fund in September 1994. Since its inception, the Fund has awarded $6.7 million in grants for collaborations between artists and organizations to create new art works. Currently, the Creative Work Fund is a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by generous grants from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation. The Fund is slowly expanding its geographic range to include artists and organizations in San Benito and Santa Clara in the 2009-10 applicant pool. In 2010, it will award approximately $600,000 in grants to nonprofit organizations and collaborating performing artists or visual artists. Grants in both categories will range from $10,000 to $40,000 and will be awarded by July 30, 2010. Projects are expected to be completed within two years, but those of longer duration will be considered. See Apply for a Grant for explicit instructions. Recent Creative Work Fund Grant RecipientsOn September 30, 2008, the Creative Work Fund announced $669,600 in grants for 18 projects featuring literary or performing artists The supported collaborations between Creative Work Fund artists and their choice of Bay Area nonprofits examine the history of Babylonian incantation bowls, connections between Indian and European musicians, stories of poets and musicians who were central to the social upheaval and identity politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and the evolution of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights movement in San Francisco. They also address pressing social issues: improving living conditions for people living in single room occupancy hotels, the inner lives of teenage girls, and the challenges facing low-income women living with HIV and AIDS. Projects feature partnerships with a geographic range of local cultural organizations, from Big Bridge Press in Sonoma to Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Center in San Pablo, to the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz. They also feature connections between artists and a neighborhood housing developer, a medical clinic, a zoo, and a school district serving a predominantly low-income community. The Creative Work Fund’s 2008 Literary Arts awardees and their collaborators are:
The Creative Work Fund’s 2008 Performing Arts awardees and their collaborators are:
Grants are recommended to the Fund by prestigious committees of panelists. 2008 grants review panelists in the literary arts were: Fiona McCrae, publisher and director, Graywolf Press in St. Paul, Minnesota; Luis Rodriguez, author and founder of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, Los Angeles, California; Louise Steinman, nonfiction author and curator of ALOUD at Central Library, Los Angeles, California; Truong Tran, poet and visual artist, San Francisco, California; and Paul Yamazaki, buyer, City Lights Books, San Francisco, California. Poet Diem Jones served as an advisor to the process. 2008 grants review panelists in the performing arts were Ella Baff, Executive Director, Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, Massachusetts; musician and music historian Barbara Barclay, Santa Clara, California; playwright Erik Ehn, dean of theater, the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California; and Susie Kozawa, sound artist, composer, and performer, Seattle, Washington. Choreographer Joanna Haigood served as a consultant to the performing arts panel; and choreographer Della Davidson of the University of California, Davis, Department of Theater and Dance; and conductor Barbara Day Turner of San Jose Chamber Orchestra, served as advisors to the performing arts process. |