Online streaming platform for accessible user experiences

BlackStar Projects

2021

$240,000

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A screenshot from the virtual event "Still Processing The Forty-Year-Old Version" featuring Wesley Morris, Jenna Worthham, and Radha Blank during the 2020 Blackstar Film Festival.

The creation of a customized online platform will enable BlackStar Projects to present its film screenings, live conversations, and other programs to a global community of BIPOC filmmakers, artists, critics, and film audiences. Building on the substantial regional and international reach of the organization’s online-only film festival during the pandemic, the platform will prioritize a high-quality and inclusive user experience that encompasses language translation and interpretation, American Sign Language, captioning, and audio descriptions.

The total grant amount represents project funding plus an additional 20% in unrestricted general operating support.

Grants & Grantees

Strategies for welcoming and accessible theater experiences

The formation of a community advisory board will support Theatre Horizon in bolstering relationships with its Norristown neighbors, increasing the diversity of its audiences, and deepening its commitment to being an antiracist theater company.

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Grants & Grantees

Multimedia production room to extend programming capacity

A newly renovated multimedia room in Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture's West Philadelphia offices will function as a community resource, enhance the organization’s media production and online programming capacity, and create new revenue opportunities.

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Collaborators & Colleagues

Jenny Gersten

Jenny Gersten is producing consultant for the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in New York.

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Collaborators & Colleagues

Annie Polland

Annie Polland has been vice president of education & programs at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City since 2009.

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Grants & Grantees

Expanded audio-visual capacity to augment program delivery

Significant audio-visual enhancements in the National Constitution Center’s three largest public spaces will augment delivery of the museum’s programs on timely constitutional issues for both on-site and online audiences, which encompass students, teachers, and adult learners from throughout the US.

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Grants & Grantees

Remodeled spaces to increase safety and accessibility

People’s Light will remodel public and backstage areas of its mainstage theater to more safely and comfortably accommodate performers and audiences, laying the groundwork to meet long-term inclusion and accessibility goals.

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Grants & Grantees

Digital / Film / Interactive Initiative: frameworks for new leadership

Pig Iron Theatre Company will hire its first director of a new digital, film, and interactive initiative to lead the experimental theater company’s extension into digital content creation, bridging live performance and media-based artmaking while also generating alternative revenue sources.

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Collaborators & Colleagues

Taneshia Nash Laird

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Collaborators & Colleagues

Joseph Rosa

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Grants & Grantees

Facility improvements for in-person and online performances

Acoustical enhancements and the creation of a livestreaming production room will support in-person and online performances at the American Philosophical Society’s Benjamin Franklin Hall.

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Event

Sakura Concert Series & Shofuso Cherry Blossom Festival

Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia (JASGP) presents the Sakura Concert Series, a new three-day event building off JASGP’s annual Shofuso Cherry Blossom Festival.

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Grants & Grantees

Live from AAMP: digital programming to expand audiences

In service of its mission to foster greater appreciation of the Black experience through art, culture, and historical witness, African American Museum in Philadelphia will expand its digital strategies to make its live programming and exhibitions, as well as newly created content, more fully available online.

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Grants & Grantees

Mission realignment to center DEAI values

Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania will engage its staff, board, community, and consultants in a strategic visioning process, centered on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion themes, that will guide its internal processes and future curatorial, public engagement, and fundraising efforts.

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Grants & Grantees

Cross-cultural programming to deepen community connections

Through a restructuring of its approach to its cultural festivals, such as the popular annual Cherry Blossom Festival, the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia will evaluate and reaffirm its commitment to “mutual curiosity, understanding, and collaboration.”

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Collaborators & Colleagues

Krishna Thiagarajan

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Grants & Grantees

Strategic collaboration to strengthen community connections

A collaboration between three organizations—Cliveden of the National Trust, Historic Germantown, and Stenton—will consider how an 18-member consortium of historic sites in Northwest Philadelphia can leverage shared resources to strengthen community relationships.

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Grants & Grantees

Multimedia storytelling to preserve folklife and cultural heritage

Reorganized staff structures, along with new technological capacity, will strengthen Philadelphia Folklore Project’s mission to sustain the vitality of folklife and living cultural heritage through collaborative community archives and multimedia storytelling projects.

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Designing organizational practices to engage diverse audiences and artists

Opera Philadelphia will refine its artistic and organizational operations and center the company around an equity and inclusion lens as it moves to engage diverse audiences and artists in advancing opera as an art form.

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Program evaluation to refine digital curriculum

Evaluators will study PRISM Quartet’s online educational program—an offering the contemporary saxophone ensemble piloted during the pandemic—to assess its effectiveness, impact, and potential to serve a wider audience.

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FWM Shopworks: new commercial opportunities for artists and organization

An initiative supported by consultants with expertise in retail, e-commerce, and web design strategies, as well as a new staff position that will coordinate commercial studio endeavors, will aim to bolster the earning potential of both The Fabric Workshop and Museum and artists.

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