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.
EWU’s Design Department has been awarded a SAGA grant to pilot university-based risograph residencies. These residencies will help advance the practices of local and regional artists in collaboration with students and the Spokane community.
Bodies in Conversation will be presented at The Magic Lantern Theater as a multimedia event: a screening of a short art film, live music, and a new play.
Seven days of events are held in the City of Spokane to raise awareness of and activism around the inequities and racism that Black mothers and other birthing people of color face.
The GLOW Children Early Learning Center is a non-profit childcare center established in 2019 to serve children infant through 12 years old. The mission of GLOW Children is to provide a safe and healthy early education program primarily for children whose parents attend Lumen High School. Their mission is also to address the important issues of poverty, trauma and equity particularly within vulnerable populations, such as teenaged parents.
After a three-year hiatus, the founders of Spokane Zine Fest, Chelsea Martin and Ian Amberson, are bringing the festival back in a big way. Spokane Zine Fest is a one-day public festival in Spokane’s Central Library celebrating zines, small press books, handmade artworks, and other limited edition works. This year it will take place on May 13th.
According to Coyote is a one-man play written by the late John Kauffman, a Nez Perce actor and playwright. The show is a storytelling of the trickster Coyote of Native American mythology. Narrated by Coyote, the play was first performed by Kauffman at the Kennedy Center in 1978; Kauffman continued to tour the show throughout the Northwest until his death in 1990.
Founded in 2022, Radio Play Co-Lab is a collaboration between Spokane Public Radio’s E.J. Iannelli, Juan Mas of Purple Crayon Pictures, and Scott Doughty and Dahveed Bullis of Spokane Playwrights Laboratory. This new alliance aims to produce high-quality, audio-centric, story-driven broadcast radio which involves and showcases local talent in every step of creation and presentation.
Founded in 1987, the Spokane Area Youth Choirs (SAYChoirs) has had an impact on the artistic culture of Spokane for many years. In August 2022, the SAYChoirs held a summer choir camp for grades 2nd through 6th. This three day experience was attended by 40 students, recruited primarily through social media, and was free to all who registered. As the first camp since COVID-19, the experience gave the organization confidence that not only is this experience needed and valued, but hinted at the need to expand the offerings to serve more students.
The Spokane Sisters’ Art Group is a collective of 13 Muslim women formed in January 2022 around a shared interest for the arts, humanities, and social service. The collective represents refugees from Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan and immigrants from Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Russia. Some of these women have not had the opportunity to explore their artistic side for a myriad of reasons, including a lack of access to an art teacher, lack of childcare, financial limitations to obtaining art supplies, and lack of support. Moreover, some members of the group do not have an adequate opportunity to connect with the Spokane community at large and vice versa due to cultural and linguistic barriers.
A two-day festival will bring the community together, inspire, uplift/ showcase the BIPOC peoples of Spokane in music and the arts and a film score residency exploring Colville stories will be hosted by Panoramic Dreams.
Spokane Aerial Performance Arts will purchase 10 sets of stilts and begin a permanent stilt walking program for young performers.
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