The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is thrilled to announce its fifth annual round of grant awards, providing a record $288,000 to support 49 ambitious and creative projects in the arts and humanities at Penn.
The Sachs Program 2022 Grant Awards support practitioners and projects that span creative practices including creative writing, music, film, photography, exhibitions, performance, artists books and zines. Grantees address a range of issues including reparations, birth justice, caregiving, the environmental impact of artistic production, and youth mentorship and training.
“These thoughtful and ambitious individuals, organizations, and initiatives are advancing the impact of the arts across Penn and the wider Philadelphia community, showing how creativity and artistic expression can be catalysts for action, positive change and healing.”
— John McInerney, Executive Director, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation
The Sachs Program’s grantmaking is part of its larger efforts to support and advance the arts across the University of Pennsylvania. Awards were given in eight categories including, for the first time, Community Partnership Grants and Alumni Art Awards. Other categories this year are Project Grants, Artist Residency Grants, Curricular Grants, Independent Creative Production Grants, Student Grants, and First-Year Seminar Grants (awarded in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences).
To learn about future funding opportunities from The Sachs Program, subscribe to our newsletter for the latest information about our grant cycle schedule with selected updates about arts happenings and news at the University of Pennsylvania.
Enjoy and be well,
John McInerney, Executive Director
Chloe Reison, Associate Director
Tamara Suber, Administrative Assistant
2022 Grant Awards
The Sachs Program 2022 Grant Awards support 49 ambitious and creative projects in the arts and humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. A small selection of the projects supported by 2022 Grant Awards includes:
- The Kislak Center will collaborate with Philadelphia Jazz Project, Ars Nova Workshop, PhillyCAM, and Philadelphia jazz musicians on the Philadelphia Jazz Oral History Project, which will document and share the stories of Philadelphia jazz musicians and their protégés to discover how these relationships influenced the evolution of jazz and popular music from the seventies to the present.
- Weitzman School of Design faculty member Kaitlin Pomerantz will develop a cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental course that connects arts and design learners to the production and disposal sites of the defining materials of their fields (ex. paper, wood, glass, pigment, “the internet”).
- Aisha Khan, Founder & Executive Director of Twelve Gates Arts gallery in Philadelphia, will complete a Curatorial Residency in the Asian American Studies Program.
- The Music Department will bring the TAK Ensemble to Penn for the 2022-2023 Academic Year, as the department’s second Ensemble-in-Residence.
- The Center for Experimental Ethnography’s Associate Director Alissa Jordan will collaborate with Carmelle Moise (MamaBaby Haiti) and Jean-Denis Aureleus (ADDEF) to produce the Hospital≠Prison Project, a reproductive-justice-based storytelling project on hospital detention.
- Undergraduate students Sebleh Alfa and Aseal Saed will organize Monolith, to showcase and uplift Black visual art by cultivating spaces in which Black art can be appreciated and exchanged at Penn.
- The Rotunda and the LGBT Center will collaborate with Emily Bate (she/her), Director of Trust Your Moves Chorus, and Julie Lipson (they/them), Founder of Inner Rhythms Music Therapy, on Trans and Nonbinary Vocal Workshops: a creative and affirming place for the transgender and nonbinary community to explore voice and song.
- Jake Nussbaum, a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology, will work with community activist Abdul-Aliy Muhammad to develop a collaborative zine, From Morton to MOVE: Reparations now!, chronicling the history of activism around human remains at the Penn Museum.
- Alum Angbeen Saleem (C ‘12), a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans multiple mediums, including poetry, film, graphic design, and visual art, will use her Alumni Art Award to produce a short film about a young Pakistani girl’s coming to terms with her unibrow, as her eyebrows come to life and begins speaking to her.
- The Netter Center for Community Partnerships will collaborate with the Paul Robeson House & Museum to train high school students to become Museum docents, developing the youths’ capacity to contribute to their communities and enabling the Robeson House to more effectively connect with visitors.
- Lauren Bakst, a PhD candidate in the department of English, will collaborate with colleagues across the School of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design to produce The School for Temporary Liveness, Vol. 3, a convening of artists, scholars, and students around experimental practices in performance and pedagogy.
A complete list of the 2022 Grant Awards as well as information about past grantees and grantmaking by The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is available in the Grants section of our website.
Grant Awards Review Process
The Sachs Program 2022 Grant Awards review process was administered by our 2022 Evaluation Committees. Six committees were convened separately to each discuss one of the six Annual Grant Award categories. Committee Members were selected based on a range of expertise, including expertise relevant to the application pool, and included previous grant recipients, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. Their evaluation was informed by the Sachs Program’s mission, priorities, and current program criteria.
In a year with a record number of applications received, with so many wonderful, ambitious, and imaginative proposals, the decisions made by the 2022 Committee Members were extremely challenging. We would like to share our sincere thanks and to acknowledge them for their hard work and thoughtfulness.
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.