Artists in Great Lakes Region Win Joyce Awards to Create New Works Reflecting Their Diverse Communities

Four Art and Culture Collaborations in Chicago, Minneapolis and Cleveland Awarded $50,000 Grants

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Jan 07, 2020, 09:23 ET

CHICAGO, Jan. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Joyce Foundation announced today that the 2020 Joyce Awards have been awarded to four collaborations between artists of color and arts and cultural organizations in Chicago, Cleveland and the Twin Cities.

The $50,000 grants will develop works that engage, educate and challenge while celebrating the diversity in their local communities. This year's Joyce Awards projects will take an important look at the themes of heritage, history and resilience.

"For 16 years, the Joyce Awards have celebrated diverse artistic talents and engaged communities throughout the Great Lakes region in vibrant conversations about the arts," said Ellen Alberding, president of the Joyce Foundation. "Each year, we are incredibly impressed by the caliber of submissions and are thrilled to help make the vision of these artists a reality."

To date, the Joyce Awards have granted $3.7 million to commission 69 new works connecting artists with cultural organizations throughout the Great Lakes region. The award is used to support artists in the creation and production of a new work and provides the commissioning organization the resources needed to engage potential audiences, new partners and their larger communities.

"This year's commissions are united in the quest to lift up voices and narratives that are rarely centered," said Tracie Hall, director of The Joyce Foundation's culture program. "We were struck by the fact that in each of these projects the artists counted community dialogue and co-creation as essential to the development process."

The 2020 Joyce Awards Winners:

Twelve Literary Arts (Cleveland)
Twelve Literary Arts will commission Terrel Wallace (aka "Tall Black Guy"), one of contemporary music's most innovative producers, to create, "The Land Claps Back," a series of programs and performances featuring inter-generational poets, vocalists and musicians that will culminate in a sound-recording composed and produced by Wallace.

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
Artists M. Carmen Lane and Shaun Leonardo will be commissioned by moCa Cleveland to produce "Recovering Cleveland's Jazz Temple," a yearlong series of arts interventions and programs paying homage to the historic African-American live music venue that was the target of racialized violence and harassment until its bombing in 1963.

Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis)
The Guthrie will commission artists Ty Defoe and Larissa FastHorse of Indigenous Direction to create a new theater production that centers Twin Cities Native stories, specifically that of the Dakota and Anishinaabe-Ojibwe people.

Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago)
The Hyde Park Art Center will commission visual artist Faheem Majeed to create a monumental artwork, exhibition and programming to commemorate the legacy of the South Side Community Art Center.

For images and news releases on each award winner, please visit the media pages here. Password: JOYCE2020.

To view a video on the Joyce Awards, please click here.

For more information on the Joyce Awards and the Joyce Foundation, please visit www.JoyceFdn.org.

About The Joyce Foundation
The Joyce Foundation is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region. The foundation supports policy research, development, and advocacy in five areas: Education & Economic Mobility, Environment, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform, Democracy, and Culture.