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.
2021 was SAGA’s fifth year serving the Spokane region. At the end of its fifth year, SAGA had funded 129 proposals providing a total of more than one half-million dollars to local artists, organizations, and businesses. 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.
Artist, Grace June, draws inspiration for her work, “Survive,” from personal experience. June’s “Survive” photographic series and book are being created to acknowledge the experience of people in our community and surrounding areas most impacted by suicide.
Vytal Movement Dance Company (VMDC) is Spokane’s only professional dance company, founded in the summer of 2016. The troupe is composed of several highly trained dancers, most of whom connected via community adult dance classes taught by Vincas Greene, VMDC’s director.
Spokane Interactive Arts is a local nonprofit which runs “Laboratory,” an artist residency program in downtown Spokane. Laboratory brings in interactive artists from all over the world for one to three months, so they can make and show work and connect with local Spokane creatives and businesses.
Spokane Civic Theatre is a nationally recognized non-profit theatre located in Spokane, Washington. Incorporated in 1947, our theatre is one of the oldest community theatres in the country.
Gonzaga University Choirs seek artistic expression through choral excellence to deliver passionate, imaginative performances that move audiences, spark the imagination, and create a sense of awe and wonder.
Reinaldo Gil Zambrano is a Spokane-based printmaking artist from Caracas, Venezuela. Gil’s current practice includes the creation of large pieces using relief printing applications, and collaboratively incorporating the audience in his printing process.
Willow Springs Books is an independent press in Spokane, overseen by Eastern Washington University’s MFA Creative Writing program. The small press plans to publish an anthology of poetry and short prose for each animal of the Chinese Zodiac.
Richmond Art Collective (RAC) is a dynamic, place-based community of multi-disciplinary artists, designers, curators, and academics practicing in the Spokane area. Its aims are to create a nurturing space for creativity, to perpetuate and disseminate the arts, to provide peer support, and to sustain the Spokane artist.
West Plains Arts Academy was formed in the summer of 2016 by Debbie Gerber, Nancy Gasper and Heather Hubbard: a group of concerned citizens and parents who felt there was an unmet demand for quality arts programs in their community.
The Spokane: The VR Film Collective are all time-based artists, coming together to blaze a pathway for VR Film production in the Spokane region.
Art Salvage seeks to promote creativity while also educating Spokane’s art communities about sustainability through their ongoing collection and reuse of materials and art supplies that otherwise would be thrown away.
The Get Lit! Festival began in 1998 as a one-day marathon of literary readings sponsored by Eastern Washington University Press and EWU’s Department of Creative Writing. Housed within Eastern Washington University’s College of Arts, Letters, and Education, the Get Lit! Festival continues to expand.
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