Inspiring creativity, artistic excellence, and collaboration in Great Lakes communities
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation has awarded more $3.7 million to commission 72 new works by artists of color since the Joyce Awards program started in 2003. In 2022, the Foundation will increase the total number of Joyce Awards granted to six.
The Joyce Awards is the only regional program dedicated to supporting artists of color in major Great Lakes cities. Since its inception, the competition has awarded more than $3.7 million to commission 72 new collaborations between artists and leading arts, cultural, or community-based organizations in six Great Lakes cities: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Each award of $75,000 supports an artist in the creation and production of a new work while providing the commissioning organization with the resources needed to engage audiences, new partners, and their surrounding communities at large, with at least $25,000 dedicated for artist(s) stipend. In 2022, the Foundation will increase the total number of Joyce Awards granted to six.
Past Joyce Awards have spanned the visual, performing, literary, and multi-disciplinary arts and have fostered exciting collaborations between artists, institutions, and communities. The Joyce Awards has also been catalytic in advancing the career of artists working across disciplines. A distinct feature of funded projects is the requirement that artists and host institutions include a robust community engagement strategy in their project plan, which often informs the project from the initial concept through the final presentation.
Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) for the 2022 Joyce Awards will be accepted until Monday, September 13, 2022. Registration for new organizational applicants due by September 9, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. CDT. Full proposals will be requested within 2-3 weeks of LOI receipt for projects that demonstrate artistic merit, innovation, and resonance with timely local or national themes, histories or concerns; potential to be catalytic or transformative for the commissioned artist(s) at this junction in their career; a robust plan for community engagement; and the likelihood of full execution within 12-18 months of receiving an award. 2022 Joyce Awards winner will be announced in May 2022.
For more information on the program and application process, watch our latest Joyce Awards informational webinar here.
Celebrating 15 Years of Joyce Awards
All Joyce Award Winners
-
Year
Sydney Chatman with Congo Square Theatre
2021 Joyce Awards: Congo Square Theatre will partner with director, educator, and writer Sydney Chatman to develop a new community-based theatrical work exploring the journey of healing from intracommunal and statesanctioned violence.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed with FRONT International
2021 Joyce Awards: A civic mural project designed to create space for diverse narratives about lived Black experiences: 'What would happen if this sentence never ended?'
Daniel Minter with Lynden Sculpture Garden
2021 Joyce Awards: A multi faceted community engagement project that draws on traditions of the African Diaspora and explores nature, ecological threats, and the healing power of art: 'In the Healing Language of Trees'
SANTIAGO X with Chicago Public Art Group
2021 Joyce Awards: An interactive digital art experience, 'Augment Earth' brings a virtual element to the 4000N, a conceptual museum trail connecting the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers.
Guthrie Theater with Ty Defoe & Larissa FastHorse
2020 Joyce Awards: The Guthrie Theater is one of four 2020 Joyce Award winners that honor collaborations between artists of color and arts and cultural organizations throughout the Great Lakes region.
Twelve Literary Arts with Terrel Wallace
2020 Joyce Awards: Twelve Literary Arts to commission Terrel Wallace (aka, “Tall Black Guy”), one of contemporary music’s most innovative producers, to create, “The Land Claps Back"
Hyde Park Art Center with Faheem Majeed
2020 Joyce Awards: Hyde Park Art Center to commission visual artist Faheem Majeed to create a new monumental artwork, exhibition, and related programming to address the important legacy of the South Side Community Art Center.
Gallery 400 at UIC with Adela Goldbard
2019 Joyce Awards: Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago will commission Mexican visual artist, Adela Goldbard, to stage The Last Judgment, a five-week exhibition at Gallery 400 and a one-day traveling, pyrotechnic performance.
TRUE Skool with Ana “Rokafella” Garcia, CHELOVE, and Aja Black
2019 Joyce Awards: Milwaukee’s center for creative arts and hip-hop culture, TRUE Skool, will give local youth an opportunity to collaborate with three pioneering female hip-hop artists to create new breakdancing, MC and graffiti-style art works.
Smart Museum of Art at UChicago with Emmanuel Pratt
2019 Joyce Awards: A group of international artists, led by Chicago’s Emmanuel Pratt, founder of the Sweet Water Foundation, in partnership with the Smart Museum of Art, will stage People, Energy, Light, Power: the [Re]Construction of Ethos.
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland with M. Carmen Lane and Shaun Leonardo
2020 Joyce Awards: ATNSC: The Center for Healing & Creative Leadership, founded and directed by M. Carmen Lane, will be serving as the commissioning arts organization of the “Somebody: Mourning at the Temple” project.
Lao Assistance Center of Minnesota with Bryan Thao Worra
2019 Joyce Awards: The Lao Assistance Center of Minnesota will engage poet, Bryan Thao Worra, to produce Laomagination: 45, an interactive, interdisciplinary exhibition presenting multi-generational stories of the Lao community.
Cleveland Public Theatre with Lisa Langford
2019 Joyce Awards: Cleveland-based playwright, Lisa Langford, will stage a new play with Cleveland Public Theatre entitled, Rastus and Hattie.
Playhouse Square with Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers
2019 Joyce Awards: Cleveland’s Playhouse Square will commission Cartography, a new theatrical work by theater artist, Kaneza Schaal, award-winning author and illustrator, Christopher Myers, and produced by ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann.
Rosy Simas with the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts
2018 Joyce Awards: The Ordway in St. Paul, Minnesota, will commission Rosy Simas (Seneca, Heron Clan) to create “Weave,” an intersectional Native dance project that examines the interwoven and interdependent nature of our world.
jessica Care moore with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
2018 Joyce Awards: The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History will commission a new theatrical work entitled Salt City by poet and playwright jessica Care moore, reflecting on themes of gentrification and cultural erasure.