For Kids
SAGA joins the effort to complete the Spokane Symphony’s fundraising to cover the cost of repairing the Fox stage floor.
Music
Grantee
Grantees
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
Grantee
Spokane Ensemble Theatre
Spokane Ensemble Theatre will perform a contemporary, high-energy reimagining of William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” in June 2022.
For Kids
Grantee
Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture (MAC)
With SAGA funding, the MAC will be able to subsidize field trips for Title 1 and underserved primary and secondary school students to attend the Dreamworks Animation exhibition.
Arts Therapy
Grantee
My Turn Theater
My Turn Theater will provide support and performance opportunities for actors with special needs, with the goal of producing a major musical production each year.
Dance
Grantee
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.
Music
Grantee
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.
For Kids
Grantee
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.”
For Kids
Grantee
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.
Culinary
Grantee
Ari Nordhagen
The Spokane Cookbook will share, celebrate, and support the stories and efforts of Spokane’s important culinary industry.
Music
Grantee
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.
Words
Grantee
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.