press room
For Immediate Release
04/20/2007Contact:
Beth Olsen
Goodman Media International for Americans for the Arts
212.576.2700 ext. 243 or bolsen@goodmanmedia.com
Americans for the Arts Awarded $400,000 Grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Washington DC — April 20, 2007 – Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America, announced today that it has been awarded a $400,000 grant for its Animating Democracy program from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan.
Animating Democracy has designed a two-year initiative to advance understanding of the social and civic impact of arts-based civic engagement. It will serve arts practitioners, funders, and public– and private-sector cultural policy makers by responding to the expressed need for quantifiable, as well as anecdotal, evidence that the arts can have potent social change effects. The ultimate goal is to better make the case for the arts’ value and contribution in civic engagement.
Animating Democracy will support selected local, arts-based civic engagement projects that have specific social change goals, and work with project leaders to assess and better understand social change effects of their arts activity. A research component involves collecting and synthesizing metrics from the arts and other fields related to measuring the impact of social change in order to share with the arts field useful and usable models.
“We are fully committed to ensuring that the arts are regularly called upon to help engage people in social and civic issues that are important in their communities,” said Robert Lynch, president and CEO for Americans for the Arts. “This grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will allow us to extend Animating Democracy’s work into the future and continue to support on-the-ground arts-based civic engagement as well as research examining the impact of this work.”
Animating Democracy fosters civic engagement through arts and culture. Over the last decade, it has supported a wide range of arts organizations doing compelling civic engagement work, implemented national research, and developed field resources and publications.
Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. With offices in Washington, DC, and New York City, it has a record of more than 45 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. Additional information is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 “to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations.” To achieve the greatest impact, the Foundation targets its grants toward specific areas. These include: health; food systems and rural development; youth and education; and philanthropy and volunteerism. Within these areas, attention is given to exploring learning opportunities in leadership; information and communication technology; capitalizing on diversity; and social and economic community development. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
For further information, please visit the Foundation’s web site at www.wkkf.org. The site offers in-depth information about the Foundation’s programming interests, information on the Foundation’s grant application process, a database of current grant recipients, and access to numerous publications which report on Foundation-funded projects.
