When the Santa Fe Arts Commission launched its Art is the Solution Fund grant program in 2022, it commissioned artists to create works on the theme of “water and displacement.” In 2023, the fund turned its attention to the theme of “structural inequality.” For the now-open 2024-2025 cycle, however, the requirements are much looser, and applicants are instead simply asked to think about how or what art might be a solution to personal, societal, environmental, or other problems—and to make that possible, five $10,000 grants are available.
“Instead of dictating a theme, we thought, why not just say ‘art is the solution’ and see how artists respond,” Chelsey Johnson, director of the city’s arts and culture department, told SFR. “Instead of dictating the solution, tell us.”
The Department of Arts and Culture will fund the five grants using revenue from the city’s lodging tax, which is specifically designed to attract tourists to Santa Fe through the arts (perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “heads in beds?”). Johnson says the final decision on the grantees will be in the hands of the city’s nine arts commissioners, who include Karl Duncan (Arikara/Hidatsa/Mandan/San Carlos Apache), executive director of the Poeh Cultural Center, Raashan Ahmad, executive director of Vital Spaces, Fulbright scholar Andrew Lovato and arts educator/scholar Winoka Yepa (Diné).
Eligibility requirements are otherwise fairly straightforward: Applicants must reside in Santa Fe County, their projects must be located within the city or county, be completed by June 2025, and provide space for community accessibility and participation. Interested parties must apply online through this link by October 15 at 11:59 p.m. The final cohort will be announced in November.
Previous winners of Art is the Solution Fund grants include progressive DIY cinema No Name Cinema for a series of screenings; artist Hernan Gomez Chavez for art classes at the homeless shelter Pete’s Place; the Alas de Agua Art Collective for its ongoing initiative Barrio Art School; Kim Fowler and the Women of the Diaspora Writing Group for the documentary theater project Blacks Seen and Unseen; and Robert Washington-Vaughns for the Black Men Flower Project, a nonprofit dedicated to Black men’s mental health and well-being through art, nature, and community. Several of the projects are still ongoing. Alas de Agua’s Barrio Art School, for example, will open an exhibition at the Santa Fe Community Gallery in the coming months, and other grant recipients have more planned for 2024.
If you have any questions, please contact the Arts and Culture Department at [email protected].
“We’re really pushing the outreach because I think the last call (for applicants) was only open for about a month,” Johnson adds. “Now it’s a two-month window because we really want to have a lot of applicants… we really want to see these projects come to life.”
