The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation 2024 Grant Awards support innovative arts activities throughout the University of Pennsylvania community. Cover design by Elaine Lopez.
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is thrilled to announce its seventh annual round of grant awards today, providing $210,000 to support 21 projects across five categories: Artist Residency Grants, Community Partnerships Grants, Project Support Grants, Curricular Support Grants, and Independent Creative Production Grants.
We are also celebrating our previously announced 17 Student Grant Awards and 9 First-Year Seminar Grants (awarded in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences). Collectively, the Sachs Program 2024 Grant Awards represent over $290,000 in funding to 47 ambitious and creative projects across the arts and humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.
Projects supported by the 2024 grant awards represent a broad portfolio of creative expression and practices—counter-cartographies, creative writing, filmmaking, theater and storytelling, visual arts, music, and more. They also support, respond to, and center a diverse range of ideas, constituencies, and directives, highlighting the significant roles the arts and humanities play in our daily lives, our well-being, and the fabric of our communities.
“The arts are an ever more vital part of our campus and community life – and central to the goals of our new strategic framework, In Principle and Practice. Every day at Penn, the arts are inventive and engaged, deepening connections with our neighbors, anchoring us in our city, and inspiring creative collaborations.”
— John L. Jackson, Jr., Provost, University of Pennsylvania
Since announcing our first grant awards in 2018, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation has awarded over $1.8 million in grants and supported more than 300 projects and practitioners across the arts and humanities at Penn and within the diverse communities we serve. Individual grants range from $4,000 to $25,000.
“Artists and creative practitioners are found across the University: teaching in dynamic curricular and co-curricular settings, thriving through extra-curricular events and activities, and ideating from administrative positions connected and disconnected from the creative work they do. We were overjoyed by the huge volume of inspiring applications we received this round and celebrate all those who submitted. We are thrilled to support these projects and practitioners and to continue advocating for our flourishing arts communities across campus.”
— Sharon Hayes, Board Chair, Sachs Program; Professor of Fine Arts, Weitzman School of Design
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2024 Grant Awards
The Sachs Program 2024 Grant Awards support the vast range of creative practices and areas of exploration undertaken by University of Pennsylvania students, faculty, staff, artists, and community partners. They advance the mission of The Sachs Program, contributing to and highlighting the vibrancy of the arts at Penn. A small selection of projects supported by 2024 grant awards includes:
- Planetary Return (Blacktronika Philadelphia), a programming series featuring colleagues and collaborators King Britt, Tyshawn Sorey, and Jasmine Henry in a bid to re-center Philadelphia as a basecamp for the exploration of the many innovative genres of electronic music that are rooted in, and created from Black culture.
- Disabled Artistic Practices, a course exploring the material conditions of disability in relationship to performance, sculpture, video, and photography alongside peer collaboration and one-on-one mentorship.
- Cleaning in the House of Healing, a residency and series of performances and workshops with Teya Sepinuck, the founder and Artistic Director of Theater of Witness, and her collaborators, uplifting those who clean in hospitals.
- Flow, a functional artwork that interacts with Andrew Hamilton School’s garden, utilizing organic resources like stormwater and natural forces like gravity and wind to support the stewardship of the K-8 school’s man-made environment.
- Hearing Women’s Voices, an exploration of string quartets written by women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Counter-Cartographies, engaging with those experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia through collaborative mapping and art practice to challenge their spatial exclusion within the American city.
- The center, an experimental essay film that meditates on material transitions, the place of the archive, and queer living across generations.
A complete list of the 2024 grant awards as well as information about previous grantees and grantmaking by The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is available on our website.
Additional information about the Sachs Program 2024 Grant Awards including a complete list of 2024 grantees can also be found in the program brochure from our grant awards celebration held on April 30, 2024.
Download the 2024 Grant Awards Celebration program. (PDF)
Grant Awards Review Process
The decisions around what to fund each year are extremely difficult and not taken lightly. This year, 2023-2024 grant cycle applications were peer-reviewed by seven committees, reflecting a range of expertise and including previous grant recipients, students, faculty, staff, alums, and community members. Decisions were informed by the Sachs Program’s mission, priorities, and current program criteria.
We would like to thank this year’s committee members for the thoughtfulness and care they brought to their deliberations. This careful consideration is a critical part of our process, as it determines what we support each year, but also, equally importantly, because it helps us generate feedback for our applicants. During the application process we offer unattributed feedback to all applicants, which is then often used to inform subsequent applications to the Sachs Program or other grant opportunities.
The Sachs Program
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation was established by Penn Alumni Keith and Kathy Sachs in 2016 to support the arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Our vision is that the arts at Penn are valued and embraced as a creative catalyst, driving innovation, inspiration, and action. We support a creative, culturally diverse, and pluralistic Penn community and are committed to supporting individuals and groups from all races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, religions, disabilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds.