The Boston-based Barr Foundation has announced fourth-quarter grants totaling $25.3, boosting its total giving for 2016 to $73.5 million.

Through its Arts and Creativity program, the foundation awarded fourteen grants totaling $7.6 million, including more than $1.5 million to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in support of a comprehensive initiative to advance the arts as a core element of municipal planning; and $1.1 million to the Worcester Cultural Coalition for a new collaborative art space and in support of a three-hundred-seat black box theater in downtown Worcester. Through its Climate program, the foundation awarded twenty grants totaling $12 million, including $1.2 million to the Conservation Law Foundation to support clean energy policy analysis and development in New England; and a grant of $455,000 to the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth to assess transit-oriented development potential in eleven "gateway" cities in the state, providing insight into how different development and transit scenarios would affect their economies, services, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Through its Education program, the foundation awarded fifteen grants totaling nearly $3.6 million, including $300,000 to Roca to expand, as part of the Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Pay for Success Initiative, its intervention model for high-risk young men in Boston; and $200,000 to College Bound Dorchester in support of an external evaluation of its college access and success model for at-risk youth. And in support of its Cross-Program Initiatives, the foundation awarded four grants totaling $600,000, including $450,000 to the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network in support of its efforts to serve as an advocate and voice of leadership for the state’s nonprofit sector; and $100,000 to the Social Innovation Forum to strengthen the organization’s marketplace approach to social impact in the greater Boston region.

The foundation also awarded more than $1.5 million to advance efforts to preserve open space across the city’s waterfront, as well as a one-time grant in support of the design, construction, and maintenance of Martin’s Park on the Fort Point Channel in memory of Martin Richard, who lost his life in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.