Joyce Awards 20 Years
The Joyce Awards, launched in 2004, was the only regional grants program that supported artists of color in major Great Lakes cities. It aimed to inspire creativity, artistic growth, and collaboration in Great Lakes communities.
In its first twenty years, the competition awarded more than $4.4 million to commission 82 new works created through sustained collaborations between artists of color and leading arts, cultural, and community-based organizations in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Each award has supported an artist or artists in the creation and production of a new work and has provided the commissioning organization with the resources needed to engage their surrounding communities.
Demonstrating the capacity of the arts to inspire and mobilize social change, the Joyce Awards have served as catalysts for artists’ creative practices and have helped foster culturally vibrant, equitable, and sustainable communities through the arts.
Joyce Awards Applications
The application process for the 2024 Joyce Awards is now closed. The Joyce Award winners will be announced in Summer 2024.
Following the announcement of the 2024 winners, the Joyce Foundation will be taking time to reflect on lessons from the first two decades of the Joyce Awards and changes in the Great Lakes region and in the arts over that time before launching the next application cycle of the Joyce Awards program.
2023 JOYCE AWARDS
The 2023 Joyce Awards winners include five innovative new projects by pioneering artists of color spanning the visual, performing, and multidisciplinary arts that engage diverse communities in Chicago, Cleveland, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Read more$4.4 million
has been awarded to new commissions by artists of color.
3
Joyce Awards winners have gone on to win Grammy Awards.
15
Joyce Awards winners have gone on to win United States Artists Fellowships.