The Guthrie Theater won a Joyce Award to work with the artists behind its 2019 performance "Stories From the Drum." Photo by Jessica Kray Martin.
Artists of color will get more money via the highly coveted, recently revamped Joyce Awards.
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation has announced that it is increasing its grant to $75,000 -- at least $25,000 of which goes to the artist. The awards fund new projects and partnerships between artists of color and arts and cultural organizations in the Great Lakes region.
The foundation's leaders felt it was important to boost the award from $50,000 to $75,000 amid a pandemic that has hit arts communities hard, said Darren Reisberg, vice president of programs and strategy. The award shows that, alongside emergency funds for survival, "there still is investment in new work and creativity."
Applications are due Sept. 14. Earlier this month, the foundation held a webinar on the process, featuring past awardee Aparna Ramaswamy of Minneapolis-based Ragamala Dance Company.
Since starting the program in 2003, the Joyce Foundation has awarded some $3.7 million to commission 69 new works.
Earlier this year, the Guthrie Theater won $50,000 to create a new project with Native American artists Ty Defoe and Larissa FastHorse of Indigenous Direction.
In the past, there wasn't a requirement about how much of the award went to the artist, versus other project costs. There were "pretty wide disparities," Resiberg said. The $25,000 stipend now acts as a minimum, he said. "We decided it was important to elevate the artist."
