ARP Maine Progress Report Group 1 – Summer and Music
We are honored to have administered the Local Arts Agency Subgranting funds for Maine within the American Rescue Plan Act as an expansion of SPACE’s nine years of project grant-making to artists across the state of Maine. The 69 grantees were announced in August and December of 2022.
Through the final weeks of 2023, we’ll be providing updates and more information for those project grants to receive ARP funding — right here on the SPACE Reader.
American Rescue Plan Act funds supported:
9 Film, animation, and media works or series
6 Musical albums
5 Theater and puppetry productions
10 Interdisciplinary, music, or dance performance works
15 Exhibitions, public art, and visual art projects
5 Community event series
7 Initiatives including workshops, classes, and art education
2 Podcasts
10 Books, art books, other publications, and written works
These 69 projects and $200,000 in sub granting funds put 615 artists in Maine to work (collaborators, cast members, crew members, fabricators, contractors, participating exhibitors, published contributors).
These awardees were in communities embedded across the state of Maine in 14 of Maine’s 16 counties. (Lacking Piscataquis and Aroostook Counties; SPACE strongly recommends artists from these counties apply for our Kindling Fund and other opportunities in the future!).
36 of the lead artist awardees identify as women (52%)
5 lead artist awardees have publicly shared they are non-binary or transgender (7%)
20 lead artists publicly identify as LGBTQ+ (29%)
7 lead artists immigrated to the US (from Burundi, Congo, Syria, China, Gabon, Germany, Afghanistan) (10%)
4 lead artists are tribal members or direct descendants of the Wabanaki Confederacy (6%)
23 grantees identify as people of color (33.3%)
Our jurors for the first round of grants were Elijah True (musician and administrator at L/A Arts), Gabriella Chase (educator at Portland Museum of Art), and JJ Peeler (formerly of Bare Portland and Bowdoin’s Department of Theater and Dance). The second-round jurors were Jerry “Genius Black” Edwards (music producer and art collective organizer based in South Portland), Galen Koch (audio storyteller and podcaster based in Portland and Machias), and Gabriel Chalfin-Piney (artist and the inaugural Program and Residency Manager at the Lunder Institute at Colby College).
Special thanks to SPACE intern Grace Hager for their efforts in compiling grantee info.