The Creative Capital Grant in the WSJ

We are so thrilled to be among this year’s class of Creative Capital grants! It is one of the coolest grants around, providing not just financial support for artists, but, well, creative support as well.

There was a terrific article in the Wall Street Journal today about the 2013 grantees entitled Where Good Ideas Go To Live which describes the grant as a “local venture-capital fund for the avant-garde.”

In case you get stuck at the WSJ firewall (although we just googled “creative capital wall street journal”, found a link to the article and got right in…), here are some salient features of our exciting new grantors:

Ruby Lerner, executive director of the organization…rejected the standard nonprofit model of “here’s a check, send us a report.” Instead, there’s a longer-term commitment, for up to five years, and an emphasis, she said, on “what will make someone stronger when they leave us than when they came in.”

The organization has been shaking up the nonprofit arts field since 1999, when it was launched in the aftermath of the decade’s culture wars as an experiment by Arch Gillies, then-president of the Andy Warhol Foundation, whose support abides in a 10-year matching grant of $1.5 million a year.

and

This year saw 2,700 proposals in three disciplines—performing arts, emerging fields and literature—whittled down to 700, then 216, before 46 projects (involving 66 artists) were approved by a final panel.

So, again, we could not be more thrilled. With this grant, Rachel, Jess, Libby, and Matty will be able to delve deeper into our next big show, PRIMER FOR A FAILED SUPERPOWER, on which we began development last summer in a residency at the National Theatre Studio in London and early in-progress presentation at the EIF.

Here’s a list of the whole group of grantees. Here’s one described in the article that sounds wild and exciting:

“You Are It”, by Williamsburg choreographer Arturo Vidich and machinist Daniel Wendlek, proposes a performance, inspired by the schoolyard game Tag, for 3,000 dancers and a human-powered hybrid electric airplane, staged on an abandoned runaway in Long Island.

Oh, the awesome company we keep. Here’s to a human-powered and amazing 2013!