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.
Stage Left Theater is founded on the belief that live theater provides a mechanism for interpersonal interaction and should be relevant to the daily lives of the audience and the players. We seek to broaden the involvement of the general population by engaging issues of topical value.
Power 2 The Poetry is a performing arts LLC specializing in spoken word poetry. The group promotes freedom of expression, and provide a platform for underrepresented demographics in the community. Power 2 The Poetry’s after school poetry program will offer a platform for students to learn how to find their voice.
Bill and Kathy Kostelec are fine art photographers specializing in black and white film. Their work has exhibited in numerous galleries and juried events in the eastern Washington area since 2007. SAGA supported their free, public exhibition of A Spokane Silver Celebration.
Counting Coup Media is a group of ambitious filmmakers who are focused on bringing a new kind of quality and style to the Native community. With over ten years of experience in video, photography, digital signage, animation and sound design, they can handle any project that hits their table.
In a significant collaboration between writer, Edward Bryan, and composer, William Berry, the classic tale of a man chasing a whale has been refashioned as a musical.
The mission of One Heart Native Arts & Film Festival is to share and showcase innovative, compelling, and empowering stories from Native perspectives through film, art, and music, celebrating the diversity and vitality of contemporary Native culture in our community today.
The Jundt Art Museum has a 23-year history of providing quality art exhibitions to the Gonzaga, Spokane, and Inland Northwest communities. The Museum is always free of charge.
Dr. Bartlett has nearly 30 years of university teaching and presentation experience in Eastern Washington. “Jumping Into Fire” is his feature length documentary that uncovers the hidden story of the first and only all African-American paratrooper unit in military history, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.
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.
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