Fringe Festival 2022. Photo by Erich Camping.

Showing Up Strong for the Arts

The Community Foundation recently awarded $379,898 to 45 local arts and culture organizations through a competitive grantmaking process (with grants ranging from $3,000 to $60,000).

These grants will make workshops affordable and exhibits portable, invite new people to the stage, forge connections across generations and counties, amplify creative voices, and so much more. In the last five years, the Foundation has tripled the amount of funding and the number of arts organizations we support.

That is on top of the $2 million our community of philanthropists gives to arts and culture organizations through Donor Advised Funds every year. The arts spark joy, new achievements, and our economy. To learn more, check out Upstate’s Creative Spark: How the Arts Is Catalyzing Economic Vitality Across Upstate New York. 

Here are just a few of the awarded grants:

• Finger Lakes Opera will premiere “Two Corners,” an opera that explores race and friendship, and expand the Young Artist Program throughout Monroe and Ontario counties.
  
• Prosper Rochester’s “No Bullies in Our House” coloring book will leverage youth voice, cultural insights, and the arts’ therapeutic power to address mental health in Monroe County.
  
• Mount Hope World Singers, a program of South East Area Coalition, will acquire tailored audio learning tools and become more accessible to those who have low vision, are blind, or find reading written music to be a barrier to becoming part of the choir.
  
• Puerto Rican Festival, Inc. and partners will teach children how to create their own “Vejigante masks” through an interactive workshop focused on the history and tradition of this iconic cultural symbol.
  
• Rochester Institute of Technology will bring to the stage this summer “Titus Andronicus,” a professional Deaf/hearing theater production that explores themes of language, power, and community.
  
• Mozaic’s Seneca County Arts Education Program will bring in community artists to help expand the skills and art education of individuals with intellectual/developmental disabilities and other barriers, featuring quarterly art shows to promote inclusion and allow the artists to showcase their work.
  
• Spiritus Christi Prison Outreach’s Arts & Nature Project offers creative outlets – from storytelling to dance – to foster empowerment for those overcoming marginalization and trauma.

Individual and public benefits compound each other when arts organizations have the funds they need to innovate programming, broaden reach, and break down barriers. For a full list of grants, click here.

These grants were made possible by the Community Foundation’s Community Impact Fund, which pools contributions from more than 100 permanent funds established specifically to support changing community needs, as well as the following funds:

Castle Fund for Music Education; Community Arts Fund; Feinbloom Family Fund; Fox-Knoeferl Family Fund; Gouvernet Arts Fund; Greater Rochester Women’s Fund; Mark & Barbara Hargrave Hard of Hearing Clarity Fund; Rodney Hatch Family Fund; Dorothy Kitzing and Elizabeth Kitzing Fund; Louise Hoyt Klinke Endowment Fund; Anne McQuay Arts and Cultural Fund II; Christine Mertz Dear Fund; Dolores and Philip Neivert Ages and Stages Fund; Clinton O. and Mary Steadman Fund; Thomas and Mildred Tulloch Fund; Esther Usdane Memorial Fund; Clara T. Wolfard Fund.