Phoenix Receives $100,000 Endowment for the Arts 'Our Town' Grant

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PHOENIX — The Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture Public Art Program in partnership with Friendly House and the Arizona State University School of Film, Dance and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts will receive a $100,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Our Town grant. 

Every year, the grants are awarded to fund innovative efforts to stimulate local economies and bolster community identity through the arts. 

NEA Chair Jane Chu announced that Phoenix is one of 66 communities in 38 states and the District of Columbia to be awarded $5.073 million in the Our Town program’s fourth year of funding. 

The $100,000 will be used to create Story Days, a two-year series of story-based arts programs and events that explore the connections Phoenix residents have to their communities.

The project will bring diverse communities together with writers and performers to highlight the forces that shape the meaning of place in Phoenix and its neighborhoods.  Story Days will involve communities surrounding Friendly House, and near public art projects at Harmon Branch Library and Park, Matthew Henson/HOPE VI and the South Mountain Library in south and central Phoenix.

The grant will enable the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture and the ASU School of Film, Dance and Theatre to select writers and performers to work directly with the Harmon Park, Matthew Henson and South Mountain communities, creating stories, poems and performances about community history and identity.  The artists and community members involved in the project will present readings, performances and events at venues, such as Friendly House and other sites throughout the city.

This is the second Our Town grant awarded to the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture’s Public Art Program.  The NEA received 275 applications for Our Town this year. The recommended grants ranged from $25,000 to $200,000. Since Our Town’s inception in 2011 and including these projects, the NEA will have awarded 256 Our Town grants totaling more than $21 million in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.