WaterFire Providence Receives Creative Placemaking Grant From NEA

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa has announced that WaterFire Providence is one of 817 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. WaterFire is recommended for a $50,000 grant to support and measure creative placemaking projects in Providence, RI.

WaterFire Providence's Livability Experiments project is an expansion of activities during its multidisciplinary urban arts event in downtown Providence. WaterFire will create, develop, present, and analyze up to seven new interactive, collaborative arts activities which will include fire performances, guerilla art events, street band interventions, a Bolivian Aymara festival, a Native American powwow, and a public art project featuring furniture designed by students at the Rhode Island School of Design. WaterFire will also partner with Rhode Island College's Program in Geography and Department of Political Science in researching creative placemaking outcomes associated with their Livability Experiments project.

In August 2012, the NEA received 1,547 eligible applications for Art Works grants requesting more than $80 million in funding. Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. The 817 recommended NEA grants total $26.3 million and span 13 artistic disciplines and fields. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.

WaterFire Providence creator and executive artistic director Barnaby Evans said, "Providence has been at the forefront of the creative placemaking movement because we have so many incredibly innovative arts organizations and artists as well as supportive local, state and federal government leaders. We are honored to have been awarded an NEA grant to continue to advance our work of using public art to inspire, build and transform community."

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