The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has announced forty-two grants totaling more than $10.2 million in support of artists and cultural organizations across the Philadelphia region.

The center awarded thirty grants totaling $9.3 million, including $1.5 million provided as unrestricted general operating support. In a shift from the center's usual funding approach, grants were awarded to foster a stable future for the arts sector and help organizations undertake critical adaptations to move forward from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recipients include the Barnes Foundation, which was awarded $480,000 to expand its online learning platform to produce and distribute arts education programs for pre-K-12 students and adults; Mural Arts Philadelphia, which will receive $438,000 to cultivate strategies for recruiting and sustaining long-term relationships with BIPOC artists; Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, which was awarded $360,000 to reimagine its business model and develop and promote programming aligned with its mission to interpret the United States' legacy of criminal justice reform; and the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, which will receive $479,556 to upgrade heating, ventilation, and air-filtration systems.

Through the Pew Fellowship program, the center awarded an additional $900,000 to twelve individuals artists working in music, visual art, dance, theater, film, and poetry. Fellows will receive unrestricted grants of $75,000 as well as professional advancement resources such as financial counseling and career-development workshops. This year's fellows include Emily Bate, a composer and vocalist whose work focuses on collective singing and blends elements of theater, performance art, and choral and experimental music; Rich Medina, whose practice as a DJ, storyteller, and educator seeks to amplify Black culture and musical traditions; and Didier William, a visual artist whose paintings and prints feature intricate patterns and ornamentation and draw from his Afro-Caribbean lineage, personal narrative, and mythology.

"Throughout this difficult period, Philadelphia’s cultural community has demonstrated great resilience and creativity, pivoting to provide essential platforms for artistic expression, understanding, and connection even during a pandemic," said Pew Center executive director Paula Marincola. "Artists and organizations have not only persevered in delivering their work to the public but are emerging from this period with new perspectives on how the arts can become more sustainable and relevant and play a key role in the resurgence of our region’s civic and economic vitality. These new grants support crucial work toward post-COVID recovery."

(Photo credit: Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site)