2021 Grantees

Since the inception of the Spokane Arts Grant Awards in 2017, SAGA has awarded more than one half-million dollars to the local arts economy. SAGA will be awarding a total of $135,000 in grants to the arts in 2021, which will be spread across three grantmaking rounds.

A panel of six community members with experience across arts and culture review eligible applications. Each selection panel serves for one year, and the names of the panelists are announced each December, after all funding decisions have been made.

Round 3 Grantees

The Spokane Arts Grant Awards (SAGA) funded seven new proposals in its third and final round of 2021. Grant winners will carry out arts projects and programs that will take place in the Spokane region over the next twelve months. The seven successful applicants received a total of $45,000 for projects in dance, opera, publishing, playwriting, education, music, and the sharing and documentation of local culinary arts.

Lucas Brookbank Brown

Brown is receiving support from SAGA to record and produce of a compilation album featuring original songs from four local individual emerging artists.

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Latah Books

Latah Books is working to position itself as one of the emerging and independent literary destinations for memoirists, while diversifying the authors they promote.

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Ari Nordhagen

The Spokane Cookbook will share, celebrate, and support the stories and efforts of Spokane's important culinary industry.

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Inland Northwest Opera (INO)

The Opera Truck is INO's newest program: a 16-foot box truck, which has been converted into a mobile stage to employ artists, expand INO’s audience, and provide educational programs through Covid restrictions.

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Vytal Movement Dance

Vytal Movement Dance will present a dance concert titled, Together We Dance, that celebrates our way back together as community. The work will be performed three times in the Spring of 2022.

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Posie Kalin

Kalin will use both digital and traditional arts as the vehicles for learning and expressing concepts in biodiversity with students at Spokane's Pratt Academy.

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Kemuel DeMoville

DeMoville is receiving SAGA support to write two short plays. These plays will eventually join a total of seven or eight new short works by DeMoville in a suite of Theatre for Youth plays entitled, "Bridges."

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Round 2 Grantees

The Spokane Arts Grant Awards (SAGA) has funded eight new proposals through a competitive process from a pool of 28 qualifying applications. Grant winners will carry out arts projects and programs that will take place in Spokane over the next twelve months. The eight successful applicants received a total of $45,500 for projects in bookmaking, film and documentary, theater, culture, aerial performance, and arts therapy.

Spokane Playwrights Laboratory

SAGA funding will support SPL’s efforts to grow and develop the Spokane theater scene.

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Melanie Hewitt

Using a popular children’s book style, Hewitt’s new work forces perspective on adult topics and their true importance.

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Sean Lizama, Milestones Media

Lizama’s new documentary aims to give voice to a group of five Marshallese youth, all high school dropouts at high risk from marginalized families.

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The Family Guide

The Family Guide will be working with AAPI artists, performers and culture bearers in the Spokane community to create a free, community-based arts and culture exhibition.

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Spokane Shakespeare Society

SAGA is thrilled to be supporting the new Spokane Shakespeare Society (S3) for the first two shows in late summer at Riverfront Park and their fall 2021 activities.

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Spokane Aerial Performance Arts LLC

With SAGA support, the circus will provide a performance opportunity for individuals and groups by student aerialists as young as 6 years old.

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Sean Finley, This Had Better Be Good Films

Jess Walter has given his permission to adapt his short story, We Live in Water, to film. The story is about toxic masculinity, the culture that allows it and the power it has to destroy generations.

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Impanda Music Studios & Community Space

Impanda is, a 501c3 nonprofit organization providing healing-focused music and arts programs.

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Round 1 Grantees

In Round 1 of 2021, the Spokane Arts Grant Awards (SAGA) has funded seven proposals through a competitive process from a pool of 31 qualifying applications. Grant winners will carry out arts projects and programs that will take place in Spokane over the next twelve months. The seven successful applicants received a total of $44,500 for projects in music, education, writing, theater, festivals, and culture. Below we provide some information about each of our new awardees:

Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo will be writing five chapters of her next book: a collection of essays about listening through hearing loss.

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Spokane Valley Summer Theatre

As a professional theatre, SVST produces three large mainstage musicals each summer at the Central Valley Performing Arts Center.

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Spokane Youth Symphony

Spokane Youth Symphony will be able to provide the required private lessons for students from disadvantaged households.

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Garfield APPLE

The purpose of this project is to inspire young children in our community to notice and appreciate the art that lives all around them.

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Get Lit! Programs

This year’s festival will be held from April 12-18 and Get Lit! is working hard to present a wide range of experiences for their audiences.

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Northwest Winterfest

Northwest Winterfests’ Celebration of the Holidays is a single event that spans eight weeks starting November 1, 2021 in Mirabeau Meadows Park.

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Mary Carpenter and Mary Pat Kanaley

Ponies in the Park is a fully illustrated, four-color, hardback picture book, which incorporates Spokane’s Riverfront Park into local art and history education.

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