Our Fund Foundation, South Florida’s only LGBTQ community foundation, announced its LGBTQ Arts & Culture Fund will award 18 grants ranging from $5,000 – $20,000, for a total of $226,500, to support innovative LQBTQ-specific programs and initiatives in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.
“With so many worthy grant applications to evaluate, our review committee prioritized agencies whose goal was building new, post-pandemic programs with expanded capabilities,” said David Jobin, president & CEO of Our Fund Foundation. “Our Fund believes that success for arts and culture agencies in the post-pandemic environment will be defined by an ability to pivot and continue adapting to evolving situations.”
Grants from the 2021 LGBTQ Arts & Culture Fund were made possible by the generous support from the following donor-advised funds at Our Fund Foundation: Anthony Timiraos and Arthur Crispino Charitable Fund, Chris Ambs and Scott Clearwater Charitable Trust, Doll/McNally Fund, Douglas J. Pew and Donald K Croxton LGBT Trust, James A. Johnson and Paul D. Dobrea Fund for Giving, The John D. Green & Jeffrey I. Sacks Charitable Fund, John Pritchard’s – Make Change Matter Fund, Michael Dager and Harvey Shapiro Stronger Together Fund, Paul Fasana Charitable Fund, Peter Grossman and Lawrence Timmins Charitable Fund, Scott L. Bennett Charitable Fund, The Sherzum Fund, Tallen Bell and George Pena Charitable Fund and The Woodham Ellis Charitable Fund with additional support from Edwin Stansell, Richard L. Huitema and Gerry Kennedy & Paul Smith.
Our Fund Foundation will celebrate the donors and recipients and the impact they have on South Florida’s LGBTQ community during a socially-distanced grant reception on Monday, June 7 at 6 p.m. at Our Fund’s headquarters, located at 1201 NE 26th St Suite 108 in Wilton Manors.
Our Fund Foundation’s 2021 Arts & Culture Fund Grant Recipients:
1. ArtServe
Stories from Within
A contemporary art exploration of the LGBTQ+ experience, culture and history in South Florida through a hybrid model of in-person and online art installations, activations and accompanying workshops, incorporating COVID-19 safety protocols.
2. ArtsUnited
Virtual Art Exhibitions 2021
Six exhibitions highlighting subjects ranging from LGBTQ+ community pride to deeply personal issues, incorporating technology to produce a hybrid in-person and virtual experience.
3. FAU/Theatre Lab
The 2021 Fair Play Initiative
A commission and development program for LGBTQ playwrights from under-represented demographics to produce two audio plays to be presented virtually.
4. Gay Men’s Chorus of SFL
Season 11 – Virtual Concerts
Support video and audio production for virtual video concert presentations for the 2021 season of performances.
5. Hued Songs
Hued Songs: 2021 Season
Support for hybrid in-person and virtual multidisciplinary performances that explore gender, identity, sexuality, and race.
6. Island City Stage
The Show Goes on
Funding to support COVID-19 related adjustments to production strategies and theatrical offerings to produce in-person shows that will also be filmed and made available remotely.
7. Miami Children’s Museum
Rainbow Families Celebration
A month-long hybrid in-person and virtual programming event meant to educate children and parents so that they can better understand the needs of all individuals in the LGBTQ community, using hands-on, interactive activities, live theatrical performances, and art activities.
8. Niki Lopez Creative
What’s Your Elephant
A series of talks, workshops, and showcases that offer the opportunity to address “the elephant in the room” or unspoken traumas through artwork as therapy, through a hybrid small group in-person and virtual meeting model.
9. OUTshine Film Festival
Queer & Trans People of Color OUTreach
Virtual Film Program dedicated to QTPOC to screen films marketed and geared to the community.
10. Pioneer Winter Collective
Pioneer Winter Collective 2021 Programming
A queer-centered, intergenerational and physically integrated dance theater presenting virtual and live programming, free hybrid performance workshops.
11. Plays of Wilton
Plays of Wilton
Funding to facilitate a return to live, in-person theater with adjustments made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
12. South Florida Symphony Orchestra
OUT with the Symphony Concert Series
Outreach program to the residents at the Residences at Equality Park to present a series of smaller-scale socially distanced chamber concerts and provide transportation to the Masterworks Concerts.
13. Stonewall
Stonewall Virtual Programming Series
Closed caption support for a virtual programming series highlighting a diverse mix of
nationally acclaimed writers, filmmakers, activists, and artists.
14. Thinking Cap Theatre
Family Affair
An activist, grassroots theatre program that addresses the pressing need to unite and ignite audiences around calls for empathy, inclusivity and the need to resume in-person theatre programming effectively and safely. It will include main stage productions of Fefu & Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes and Wilde’s Tales: An Original Adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales.
15. Thou Art Woman
Thou Art Woman
Event series celebrating LGBTQ women and their allies through performance and visual art. Transitioning to a virtual production while collaborating with other local performance art organizations.
16. United Church of Christ
Holiday Concert
Pre-Christmas Holiday Concert from an LGBTQ affirming non-denominational church, to be presented virtually and in-person.
17. Unity Coalition
Celebrate ORGULLO Festival
Exploring the Art of Ilusión: How the Art of Drag, Creativity, Talent and Self-Expression influence our daily lives. Fifteen days of virtual and in-person programming implementing pandemic precautions.
18. World AIDS Museum
40 Years of AIDS: Road to Ending Stigma
Exhibit telling the story of HIV and its impact in the LGBTQ+ community, transitioned to a virtual program offering.
Special consideration was given to organizations and projects that are organized by, and work on behalf of, underserved populations within the LGBTQ community (including ethnicity, race, age, gender, gender identity and physical and cognitive ability). Consideration was also given to organizations that provided proof of proactively addressing gaps in the representation of underserved populations in regard to board, staff, audience and user participation and to programs that have limited appeal to traditional funding sources as well as to applications that leverage partnerships between similar-missioned agencies to reduce duplication of effort/resources and expand reach/services.
Established in 2011, Our Fund Foundation has grown into the third-largest LGBT foundation in the nation. As South Florida’s only LGBT community foundation, Our Fund promotes a culture of philanthropy by uniting donors with organizations advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties and supporting causes within the LGBT community. For more information on Our Fund Foundation visit our-fund.org or call 954-565-1090.