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.
SAGA is excited to support Hannah Charlton in her research, documentation and display for The Forgotten Book of Women. Her project will begin with seven 9” x 12” pieces in gouache and gold on vegan parchment.
SAGA will be supporting Jill Smith’s project, which helps our region’s women veterans to heal and connect through working with clay.
Based on a survey of need in Spokane’s digital content community, SFP has put together a series of educational panels and workshops.
Live-stream concerts and new compositional works by local musicians, and a video educational program for local students and schools.
Black Lens News created a 12-page, full-color insert filled with the photographs of 16 African Americans in Spokane and their stories.
SAGA will support Northwest BachFest in producing and distributing musical “Postcards from Spokane.”
SAGA is providing support for Spark Central’s “West Central Publishing Union” (WCPU) in order to continue their mission of decreasing the artistic opportunity gap even as their mode of delivery changes.
KYRS was granted general operational funding from SAGA to continue to promote and support the arts.
SAGA is providing Terrain with operational support due to the financial fallout from Covid.
The Avenue West Gallery has received operational support from SAGA to help with issues arising from the COVID-19, and to help raise awareness of the gallery with a mural by artist, Aaron Smith.
Artist Katie Creyts is pursuing a new medium in her artistic practice and with the help of the SAGA.
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