2024 Grant Awards

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 the University of Pennsylvania and within the diverse communities we serve. As we’ve seen each year with the program’s growth, the 2024 pool of applicants across all grant categories was again our largest to date. The proposals received represent the vast range of creative practices and areas of exploration by students, faculty, staff, artists, and community partners. The decisions made about what to support were difficult and not taken lightly.

Through our 2023–2024 grant cycle, we awarded 21 grants across five categories: Community Partnerships Grants, Artist Residency Grants, Project Support Grants, Independent Creative Production Grants, and Curricular Support Grants. In addition, we awarded 17 Student Grants and 9 First-Year Seminar Grants (in partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences) for a total of 47 grants awarded and over $290,000 in support.

Not included in this list are our Rolling Grants: up to $2,000 offered on a rolling basis to Penn faculty, staff, departments, programs, and centers to support arts activities that fall outside of our annual grant cycle.

We are incredibly proud of the 2024 Sachs Program Grant Award recipients. They represent a broad portfolio of creative expression and practices and respond to and center a diverse range of ideas, communities, and directives. We are thrilled to share all of their wonderful projects with you.

Puck
- Justin Gotzis
- Penn University Life, Platt Student Performing Arts House
The Art of Care
- Aaron Levy, PhD, MPhil
- College of Arts & Sciences, Penn Medicine, Public Trust
Hard Copy
- Alicia Riccio
- Graduate Fine Arts Department, Weitzman School of Design
Save Chinatown, Save our city
- Alyssa Chandler
- College of Arts & Sciences, Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts and Design
Investigating the Old 7th Ward
- Amy Hillier
- College of Arts & Sciences
Conspi(racism)
- Azsaneé Truss
- Annenberg School for Communication
Versus: Conflict Resolution through Acting and Roleplay
- Barbara & Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships and Acting Up Acting Out Drama School
- Netter Center
Flow
- Barbara & Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships and Shelley Spector
- The Netter Center
Rematriación: Casa, Tierra, y Liberación/ Rematriation: Home, Land, and Liberation
- Bonnie Samantha Maldonado
- Department of Africana Studies, School of Arts & Sciences
Catching on The Nose, ep 01: what does a nose know?
- Catching On Thieves
- Graduate Fine Arts Department, Weitzman School of Design
Counter-Cartographies: Spaces of Belonging for the Unhoused in Philadelphia
- Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics and the Bethesda Project
- Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics
(Digit)al Dread
- Cienna Davis
- Annenberg School for Communication
Laughter and Tricky Topics
- Corine Labridy
- College of Arts & Sciences
Hearing Women’s Voices
- Daedalus Quartet
- Department of Music, School of Arts & Sciences
Black Queer Traditions
- Dagmawi Woubshet
- College of Arts & Sciences
THE MUSEUM OF HIDDEN GENIUS: An Atlas of Afrotech
- Dr. Matthew Kenyatta
- City and Regional Planning, Weitzman School of Design
Urban Film Youth Mentorship Project
- Dr. Matthew Kenyatta, The Philadelphia Film Factory (Philm Factory), and We Embrace Fatherhood
- City and Regional Planning, Weitzman School of Design
Decolonizing French Food
- Elizabeth Collins
- College of Arts & Sciences
Blood Orange
- Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn
- Perry World House
Humming from Babel
- Gayoung Lee
- Graduate Fine Arts Department, Weitzman School of Design
Phantom of a Fallen Queen
- Irma Flóra Kiss
- College of Arts & Sciences, History of Art Department
Clusters (Landfill)
- Jacob Weinberg
- Graduate Fine Arts Department, Weitzman School of Design
Predictive Living
- Janice Kim
- College of Arts & Sciences, Computer and Information Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (Penn Engineering), Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts and Design
La Protección (Protection), an Artist Residency with Jose Ortiz-Pagan
- Johnny Irizarry and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies
- Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, Latin American and Latinx Studies Program (LALS)
Purgatorio and Spare (Thinker)
- Jonathan Santoro
- Penn Museum
Why College? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
- Jonathan Zimmerman
- College of Arts & Sciences
First-Year Seminar at the Kelly Writers House
- Julia Bloch
- Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, College of Arts & Sciences, Department of English, Kelly Writers House
Italian Film and Media Studies
- Julia Heim
- College of Arts & Sciences
Constructing Community
- Laia Mogas-Soldevila, Campbell Grey, and Lauder College House
- College Houses, Weitzman School of Design
Caves, Cathedrals, and Curiosities: Unearthing Stories on the Chemin des Dames in France
- Lisa Britton
- School of Arts & Sciences, The Francophone, Italian, & Germanic Studies (FIGS) Department
Doing Research
- Lisa Mitchell
- College of Arts & Sciences
Disabled Artistic Practices
- Mae Eskenazi
- Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, School of Arts & Sciences
Philadelphia Artists & Culture Keepers: A Digital Media Project
- Melissa B Skolnick-Noguera
- Annenberg School for Communication, School of Social Policy and Practice
Imaginary Bodies: The Early Poems of Liliana Ponce
- Michael Martin Shea
- Program for Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, School of Arts & Sciences
Planetary Return (Blacktronika Philadelphia)
- MUSICA PRACTICA / ELETTRONICA VIVA x Jasmine Henry
- Department of Music, School of Arts & Sciences
Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona and its adaptations (The One Series)
- Natalia Reyes
- Department of English, School of Arts & Sciences
Illuminating Unhoused Patients’ Healthcare Experiences through Photography
- Neha Shetty
- College of Arts & Sciences, Department of History and Sociology of Science
Drawing Together: Medieval Today (Working Title)
- Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert
- History of Art Department, School of Arts & Sciences
Participatory Action Art Mentorship Program (PAAM)
- Participatory Action Art Mentorship Program
- College of Arts & Sciences, Wharton School
Penn Fashion Show 2024, Illustrated Perspectives: A Rogue Relaunch
- Penn Looks
- Weitzman School of Design, Wharton School
Juneteenth Community Arts Partnership
- Penn Museum
- Penn Museum
The center [working title]
- Rudy Gerson and lexi welch
- Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts and Design
Executable Transmutable Language (xtl)
- Sarah Kim, Noah Jacobson-Carroll, and Kat Nzingha
- Institute of Contemporary Art
Art, Pop, and Belonging: How to Talk About Korean Popular Culture
- So-Rim Lee
- College of Arts & Sciences
The West Philadelphia String Music & Mentorship Program (WPSMMP)
- The West Philadelphia String Music & Mentorship Program Collective
- African American Resource Center, College Houses, Graduate School of Education
The BagasSeat: An Ode to the Southeast Asian Market
- Yuanyi Cen
- Landscape Architecture, Weitzman School of Design

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