Stavros Niarchos Foundation Announces $1 Million Grant in Support of ArtPlace America
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation recently approved a $1 million grant to support ArtPlace America in its national work in the field of creative placemaking. The grant, distributed over two years, will support ArtPlace America's four program areas:
- A national grants program that annually supports creative placemaking projects in communities of all sizes across the U.S.
- Community development investments in six place-based community planning and development organizations that are working to permanently and sustainably incorporate arts and culture into their core work
- Fieldbuilding initiatives to connect and grow the field of practitioners
- Research strategies to understand, document and disseminate successful creative placemaking practices.
ArtPlace America was established in 2010 as a 10-year collaboration among a number of leading U.S. foundations, federal agencies and financial institutions, that works to position arts and culture as a core sector of comprehensive community planning and development in order to help strengthen the social, physical and economic fabric of communities. This entails having arts and culture represented alongside sectors like housing and transportation—with each sector recognized as part of any healthy community; as requiring planning and investment from its community; and as having a responsibility to contribute to its community's overall future.
"We are thrilled to welcome the Stavros Niarchos Foundation as ArtPlace's 15th foundation partner," said Jamie Bennett, executive director of ArtPlace America. "We are grateful for their generous support, and we are eager to both learn from and share lessons with their community of grantees around the world."
"ArtPlace America's mission aligns with one of the foundation's core principles of engaging and revitalizing communities through the arts," stated Andreas Dracopoulos, co-president of the board of directors of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. "For a number of years, ArtPlace has been the leading force behind the philanthropic community's creative placemaking efforts and we are honored to be part of this collaborative initiative to help further their outreach."
For more information, visit www.snf.org or www.artplaceamerica.org.
