A group photo

Art Encounter

Art Encounter educates and connects through interactive encounters with visual art. It offers interactive education tours, outreach programs for students, seniors, and adults with disabilities, and a community mural initiative. Art Encounter has a traveling collection of original contemporary art that informs its outreach curriculum. The art has been donated by the artists, 60% of whom are white, cisgender artists. There is no formal process in place to acquire art or to diversify the body of work. This grant will help Art Encounter develop an intentional art acquisition system that pays artists for their work, and diversifies the collection to be representative of local artists of color and neurodiverse and LGBTQ+ artists, and works with the artists to develop curriculum that represents each artist’s work in an authentic way.

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a teacher at the front of class wearing a mask

Ballet Folklorico de Chicago

Ballet Folklorico de Chicago is a traditional Mexican dance school. The organization has experienced rapid growth in the past four years and its staffing and operations have not kept pace. This grant will help Ballet Folklorico evaluate the organization's operations and determine a more optimal structure and create a strategy that aligns with its vision for bringing quality arts education to more Chicagoans.

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a group photo exterior with students holding up thier instruments

Madison Street Theatre

Madison Street Theatre is a performing arts center that produces, supports, and hosts arts programming in Oak Park, IL. It acquired its building in 2019. The building had fallen into disrepair and the company began its rehab by ridding the theater of vermin and moldy carpeting, installing new equipment, and upgrading the interior. This grant will help support Madison Street Theater to conduct a full accessibility assessment and create architectural plans for improvement.

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One Voice for the Arts

One Voice is a collective of four Oak Park arts organizations working together to leverage more than they can individually. None of the organizations has staff solely dedicated to development. The organizations believe that a partnership offering a broader reach and a wide-reaching demographic would be attractive to local corporations. This grant will support One Voice to develop a fundraising strategy and receive training in how to approach corporations and larger businesses.

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2nd Story

2nd Story is a literary organization focused on storytelling. It has been a leader in pay equity in the arts in Chicago. This grant will allow 2nd Story to research and develop a thoughtful, sustainable, and replicable teaching artist onboarding process and training program and create the internal infrastructure (systems, documents, resources, etc.) and financial modeling needed to sustain its teaching artists over time.

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South Asian Institute

South Asia Institute cultivates the art and culture of South Asia and its diaspora through curated exhibitions, innovative programs, and educational initiatives. This grant will help South Asia Institute explore opportunities for collaboration with other local cultural organizations for intercultural community engagement and to expand its audience base. Its longer-term goal is to create a program development system that converts spectator audiences into active participants in the programming that South Asia Institute develops.

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True Star Media

True Star empowers underserved youth to forge their own paths by providing jobs, training, and real-world work experience that teaches them how to develop, create, and market digital content on platforms that celebrate their identity and perspective. True Star is working to shift its organizational structure and transition from a journalism-centric organization to a production-focused agency. This grant will assist True Star in the next phase of its efforts to build a production mindset in staff and students and shift its operations to align with small productive studio requirements.

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Water People Theater Group

Water People Theater produces socially-engaged bilingual and inclusive Latin theater. A previous AWF grant helped Water People pilot youth classes as a potential way to support young people and generate earned revenue. The pilot helped Water People identify the project's strengths and weaknesses. This grant will allow Water People to analyze the data obtained from the pilot program, develop a financial strategy to explore ways of increasing earned revenue through the program while maintaining its scholarships program and sliding scale model, develop advertising campaigns to attract new participants, and build alliances with other youth-serving Chicago organizations.

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a mask making workshop with skull masks

Winifred Haun & Dancers

Winifred Haun & Dancers creates contemporary and innovative works that illuminate and elevate diverse artists, audiences, and global themes. Part of the company’s artistic vision is to have dance viewed not only in the context of professional presentation but also at the community-level and in non-traditional performance venues. With a business plan already in place, the AWF grant will support the marketing and administration of a pilot earned revenue early career dancer training model.

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