Spokane Arts Grant Awards (SAGA) funds multiple programs and projects three times every year through a competitive application process. Grant winners carry out arts related activities in the Spokane area during the twelve months following their award date. Awards can be for any amount up to $10,000.
SAGA defines the term “arts” by observing our community’s creative activity. We live in a region populated by many cultures, talented in varied crafts and trades, and curious about learning and engaging in technique, expression, and artistic community. SAGA has funded blacksmithing and glassblowing, cultural art forms such as canoe making, performance, exhibition, education, therapy, and individual artistic development. We have also funded arts-based businesses and new collaborations.
SAGA stands on the principle that creatives should be paid for the work they do and we educate both the broader community and the artistic sector that creative work has value.
Due to Covid, the City of Spokane faced a 60% drop in its admissions tax income in 2020. The City’s 2020 tax revenue was the basis for SAGA grants in 2022, leaving us with less than half of the funds we required to sustain meaningful grantmaking to arts and culture that year. We were prepared for relatively normal tax base downturns, so we were able to offset some of the Covid shortfall, but even exhausting our emergency fund, the tax base losses outstripped our resources by well over $50,000.
To maintain our grantmaking in 2022, SAGA was grateful to receive $50,000 in support from the NEA Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) program. This support meant we were able to fund an additional seven projects in 2022 during a time when organizations were feeling a second pinch: that audiences and customers were not yet returning to pre-Covid levels. We are grateful to the NEA for supporting Spokane’s arts and culture at that critical time.
At the end of 2023, SAGA had funded 171 proposals providing a total of more than $800,000 dollars to local artists, organizations, and businesses.
2024 is SAGA’s eighth year serving the Spokane region. Below we provide a complete list of each of our awardees since our first year of funding in 2017. View just the most recent year’s winners here.
Bringing Contemporary Art into the Lives of Elementary Children with the Foster Art Project: Elementary children at Browne Elementary will be directed by a professional artist to help create both large and smaller scale art. which will be publicly displayed and loaned out to reside in student homes temporarily.
With SAGA support, a sought after, sustainable ceramics center will be returning to operation in Spokane. GO Art Center will be repairing equipment, upgrading safety features, and preparing for a broader set of therapeutic, corporate, and community workshop offerings for Fall 2020.
Sarah Edwards and Ava Barany of The Botanical Alchemists will be creating a three-part, seasonal, free-to-the-public, Community Nature Art Workshop Series seeking to engage a broad spectrum of participants in the Spokane community.
Richmond Art Collective (RAC) is receiving SAGA support for operational and infrastructure development costs related to an unexpected relocation.
Finding Your Light: An Evening of One Act Plays is a three-night theater event featuring 10-15 minute plays written by mentored teen playwrights.
SAGA will be providing support for Spectrum’s Community Choir, the creation of a choral composition, and the production of multiple choral performances focused on diversity (once performances can be safely held again).
After staging a performance of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” on January 11, 2020 at the Bing Crosby Theater, SYB will create an educational curriculum that uses “Peter and the Wolf” to teach elements of dance to local school children.
SAGA supports the expansion of The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture’s “Monday Movies.”
Native filmmakers Misty and Hope Shipman-Ellingburg receive SAGA support to create a short film exploring the topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Willow Springs Books Chinese Zodiac chapbook series supported by Spokane Arts Grant Awards (SAGA).
With SAGA support, CMTV will fund an internship program to offer aspiring filmmakers real-world experience on the set of filming a 30-minute documentary highlighting local basketball legend, Bobby Jack.
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