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.
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.
Brian Deemy works comfortably in the tintype process and would like to bring his expertise, access to the process, and its results back to Spokane.
Tribal elder and Sanpoil/Spokane artist Diane Covington will hold ten workshops throughout 2020 integrating art making and artistic practice, seasonal stories and lessons.
Taking up residence in the Steam Plant (in the former Pop Up Shop space), Roin Morigeau and Cody Schroeder are stepping into a ten-year plan to create an accessible and sustainable variety of arts activities.
Dr. Cary Boyce is known locally as the General Manager of Spokane Public Radio, but away from home, Cary is known primarily as an Emmy award-winning composer. SAGA is providing support for the composition and presentation of a new work in partnership with two of Spokane’s premiere ensembles.
Apostrophe is a student lead group that exhibits LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and women student artists from six local universities and colleges. Apostrophe will be holding its second annual exhibition of curated student work at an independent gallery space, to be announced, during the month of April 2020 with SAGA support.
With support from SAGA, Scablands Books will publish a graphic novel, Baby Speaks Salish, by local writer Emma Noyes. Proceeds will go to the Salish School of Spokane, which is dedicated to keeping the interior Salish languages alive in the face of ongoing colonialism.
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