Past
Grantees

KATHY HUANG, documentary filmmaker, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Guangzhou, China, to experience firsthand the thriving community of African traders and lay the groundwork for a documentary that takes a fresh look at China through the eyes of these new immigrants.  Since 2003, the population of Africans in China has grown at a dizzying rate: 30 to 40% annually.  Huang will spend her time in Guangzhou observing life in African churches, markets, salons and restaurants, and also talking to local Chinese who interact regularly with Africans.  This trip will provide Huang a rich orientation to the landscape of African immigrants in China.

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $52,500 in support of two literary programs, Beyond the Pure Fellowships for Writers and VERVE Grants for Spoken Word Poets. A multidisciplinary, multicultural arts center, Intermedia Arts is a catalyst that builds understanding among people through art. The fellowship program, which awards grants of up to $4,000 to emerging writers, aims to increase the visibility of and provide a platform for emerging writers whose voices have historically been under-represented in the literary arts. This program provides community, mentorship, guidance, workshops, and resources to the artists selected. VERVE Grants support emerging spoken word poets who are interested in artistic advancement and leadership in their communities. Through financial assistance, professional encouragement, and recognition within a culturally and socio-economically diverse group of literary artists, this program strengthens and supports Minnesotas literary community. VERVE artists participate in a cohort program that provides community, mentorship, guidance, workshops, and resources.

The INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE (ICE), Brooklyn, New York, received $12,000 to support the commissioning of new works by emerging New York City-based composers in ICElab Collaborations.  ICE is dedicated to reshaping the way music is heard and experienced.  It functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of this time.  It emphasizes interdisciplinary collaborations, commissions of new work, and performances in non-traditional venues.  ICElab places teams of ICE musicians in close collaboration with composers to develop evening-length works that push the limits of musical exploration.  Jerome support is directed toward the participation of two emerging New York City-based composers in ICElab. 

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM, Brooklyn, New York, received $16,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the Artist-in-Residence Program.  ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering performance center, presenting projects by emerging and established experimental artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue about art and culture in the broader community.  It commissions and premieres more than 20 new works each year and presents a diverse array of artists working across the disciplines of music, sound, dance, performance, literature, video, and film.  The Artist-in-Residence Program provides emerging artists with year-long residencies, rehearsal space, production support, curatorial services, and marketing support to create new work, reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience.  Jerome funding supports commissions for emerging artists in this program.

SANGAMITHRA IYER, writer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to London, United Kingdom and Yangon/Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), to research historical documents of Burma in the 1930s and witness current conditions to inform a creative nonfiction book project, Divining Water, which blends memoir, family history, and reportage.  Iyer’s project looks at the parallels between her work as a writer and engineer with her paternal grandfather, a civil engineer and water diviner who was active in the Freedom Movement in India.

THE JAZZ GALLERY, New York City, received $25,000 in support of a Residency Commissions Program for emerging composers.  The Jazz Gallery nurtures the youngest generation of professional jazz musicians by giving them an audience for their performances and a stage upon which to assemble their bands.  The Residency Commissions Program offers composers a commissioning and residency stipend and a creative space in which to develop, rehearse, and workshop new music before it is made public.  Each composer creates a residency that meets his or her individual needs.  

THE KITCHEN, New York City, received $20,000 in support of emerging artists commissions for performance and exhibition projects. The Kitchen is a performance and exhibition space dedicated to supporting new work by innovative artists working within, and across, the fields of music, dance, theater, video and film, digital art, and literature. The organization is widely known for its commitment to experimental new work. Its mission is to provide emerging and under-recognized performing and visual artists with the space, financial support, and technical resources to develop and present new work. The Kitchen presents more than 90 evenings of new and interdisciplinary performance productions each year and more than 30 weeks of visual arts exhibitions. It also supports residencies for artists and work-in-progress showings.

MICHEL KOUAKOU, choreographer, Jackson Heights, New York, will travel to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to study the traditional arts of the Boule Tribe. Kouakou returns to his birthplace to study Ivorian traditional mask dances and take classes from a variety of dance masters and participate in hands-on workshops at an artist co-operative center, Village Ki-Yi M'Bock.  This experience will fuel his creative investigation of the ways traditional dance and mask work and identity are expressed in contemporary African culture.

HANNAH KRAMER, choreographer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Stolzenhagen, Germany, to attend the P.O.R.C.H. (Ponderosa Ongoing Research and Collaborative Happenings) program at Ponderosa Movement and Discovery, an international improvisation and performance venue. P.O.R.C.H. provides an immersive environment for artists to experience a diversity of movement and performance practices. Kramers goal is to gain insight, perspective, and resources for the continued development of her creative process and broaden her exposure to contemporary dancemakers.

The LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER, New York City, received a two-year grant of $36,000 in support of the Jerome New York Fellowship and the participation of emerging playwrights in the Play Development Program.  A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the Lark provides playwrights with resources to develop their work, nurtures artists at all stages in their careers, and invites them to express themselves freely in a supportive and rigorous environment.  Scouting programs identify new writers.  Incubation programs provide a toolbox of artist-led development processes.  Advancement programs build collaborations that lead to productions.  The Jerome New York Fellowship supports an emerging playwright for two years.  The fellowship stipend is accompanied by an opportunity fund for travel, research, workshops and other needs.  

THE LOFT LITERARY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $120,000 in support of the Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant Program. The Loft supports the artistic development of writers, fosters a writing community, and builds an audience for literature. The Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant Program provides writers with financial support and professional assistance to develop and implement multifaceted plans to facilitate their artistic endeavors. The program is open to poets, prose writers, childrens authors, and spoken word poetry artists. Support may be used for such activities as taking time off work to focus on writing, attending a writers conference, meeting with editors and publishers, improving performance and presentation skills, consulting with mentors or colleagues, and marketing a first book. Applications are reviewed by an independent jury of literary professionals.

THE LOFT LITERARY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $104,000 in support of the Mentor Series.  The Loft’s mission is to support the artistic development of writers, foster a writing community, and build an audience for literature.  As an intergenerational, multicultural literary arts center, The Loft operates as an artist service organization, a gathering place for writers and readers, a community school for the arts, and a presenting organization.  It is an incubator for the creative writing process, nurturing novelists, poets, spoken word artists, and writers in every genre and style, and connecting them to readers and live audiences.  The Mentor Series offers 12 emerging Minnesota writers in poetry and creative prose the opportunity for year-long intensive study with six nationally acclaimed writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.  Included in the program are craft seminars, intensive genre-specific workshops, individual manuscript conferences, seminars, craft talks, one-on-one manuscript consultations, and public readings.  

The LOWER EAST SIDE PRINTSHOP, New York City, received a two-year grant of $29,000 ($14,500 per year) to support the participation of emerging New York City-based artists in the 2011–2012 Keyholder and Studio Rental Residencies.

The LOWER MANHATTAN CULTURAL COUNCIL (LMCC), New York City, received a two-year grant of $46,000 in support of the Workspace Program. LMCC is an advocate and service provider to artists and arts groups downtown and is deeply committed to the relationship among art, culture, and quality of life. Workspace offers free individual studios for nine months to talented, emerging artists through an open call and panel review process. Up to 30 emerging visual artists and writers are given the space, time, and resources to develop new work. Artists receive stipends, opportunities to network within the arts community, and access to additional resources and services to help strengthen their careers. Artists participate in a weekly Salon Series, which presents valuable opportunities to gain feedback from and share their work with leading curators, gallerists, museum directors, critics, agents, publishers, and educators.

MABOU MINES, New York City, received $30,000 in support of the Suite Resident Artist Program for emerging artists in New York City.  Mabou Mines is an artist-driven experimental theater collective generating original works and re-imagined adaptations of classic plays through multidisciplinary, technologically inventive collaborations among its members and a wide world of contemporary composers, writers, musicians, puppeteers, and visual artists.  The Resident Artist Program offers emerging artists the opportunity to experience the long-term, process-oriented method of developing work practiced by Mabou Mines.  The program is open to small companies and individual artists in all fields who are interested in investigating compelling performance ideas.  The program offers emerging artists mentoring from the artistic directors of Mabou Mines, stipends, rehearsal and performance space, and administrative and technical assistance.  Participants attend monthly meetings, creating an artistic community through shared ideas, and show their work at the program’s culmination.  

A grant was awarded to SUSAN MARKS and JOHN KURTIS DEHN for Murder in a Nutshell: The Frances Glessner Lee Story. This feature-length documentary is about a mysterious and brilliant woman who pioneered the field of legal medicine (later called forensics) in the 1930s, an era when women were rarely accepted in the realms of law enforcement and science. Frances Glessner Lee was a wealthy heiress from the Victorian age, but she was far from the eras picture of femininity. She was no-nonsense in appearance, extremely intelligent, and well read. Still, her father, of the International Harvester fortune, forbade her from going to college, insisting education was wasted on women. Frances married young, had children, and quickly divorced. Without money of her own, she spent much of her adult life under the thumb of her controlling parents. Her brother introduced her to a friend from Harvard, Dr. George McGrath. She and McGrath struck up a close friendship that led to many late nights talking through details of crime scenes and grisly murders. Frances came to understand the need to better educate police detectives in processing crime scenes. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, she was considered a pioneer in the budding field of forensics. She went on to become the first woman member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences as well as an honorary police captain in the New Hampshire State Police, with full rights and privileges. Through her accomplishments, she was dubbed, The Patron Saint of Forensics.

PALOMA MCGREGOR, choreographer, New York City, will travel to St. Croix to conduct ethnographic, archival and physical research that will lead to the development of a new choreographic work.  McGregor plans to research the cultural traditions, landscapes and identities of her home island, as well as the ecological and cultural impact of the Hovensa Oil Refinery. This research is critical to the development of her new work Building A Better Fishtrap, which explores themes of water, memory, and home through her father’s fishing stories.

"MARGARET MILES, writer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Westchester, New York to research aspects of the lives of industrial tycoons John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.  This research will inform an anti-polemical creative nonfiction work-in-progress that weaves together the stories and voices of present-day homeless individuals and people of enormous wealth in American history. Miles’ research will familiarize her with the worlds of Rockefeller and Carnegie, major players in the corporate structure and financial systems of the United States as well as founding fathers of American philanthropy."

"KALEENA MILLER, choreographer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Chicago, Illinois, to attend Rhythm World to hone her tap technique, learn new ideas about improvisation, and make connections with tap dancers from around the world. Miller will study with tap masters Sam Weber, Jason Janas, and Michelle Dorrance to work on the complexity of her technique and the fusion of traditional tap with modern form. The inspiration and knowledge from this opportunity will be woven into her tap-based choreographic work that fuses modern dance, tap, and movement."

KEITH MILLER was awarded support for Primo and Shan (working title), a feature-length narrative set within the world of East New Yorks gangs. The work follows two men as they face the challenges of inner city manhood, although what this means for each is very different. For Primo, it means becoming a father and an honest man. For Shan, a 15-year old who recently joined a gang, it is less clear. He blames Primo for his fathers death and sees the gang and revenge as a path to manhood. Both Primo and Shan struggle with the consequences of gang life. This story is an attempt to understand the complicated nature of gang life and to humanize the people who participate in it.