These Pew Center for Arts & Heritage grantees have a social impact bent

Grants season continues in full force.

Pew Center for Arts & Heritage just announced its 2017 grant recipients, including 12 Pew fellows, 39 projects and two multiyear advancement grants for larger-scale programs.

See the full list of grantees here.

Of the 39 projects — which received up to $300,000, plus funding for general operating expenses — a few stick out for having especially cool social missions. Just a few of them:

• African American Museum in Philadelphia will fund its AAMP Residency for Art and Social Change: “A pilot artist residency program for emerging black artists engages with the Olney neighborhood of North Philadelphia and responds to current social issues through the interpretation of AAMP’s collections.”
• Asian Arts Initiative will produce (ex)CHANGE: History Place Presence: “Six temporary public artworks across Philadelphia, created by a multidisciplinary group of Asian American artists, reflect on the city’s diverse narratives and changing neighborhoods.”
• Bryn Mawr College will support Gardens Speak and other works by Tania El Khoury: “The immersive installation work of Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury is highlighted in a multi-part performance project that shares the narratives of Syrian citizens and refugees and addresses displacement, oppression, and justice.”
• Eastern State Penitentiary will produce the “Hidden Lives, Illuminated” film project: “Stories from inside America’s correctional system are brought to light through four newly commissioned, animated short films, projected onto Eastern State Penitentiary’s 30-foot facade.”
• Institute on Disabilities at Temple University is producing Discovering the Selinsgrove Center:
  “An artist residency model takes shape in this public history project designed to illuminate the first-person narratives of people with intellectual disabilities and their experiences of institutionalization at Selinsgrove Center in Central Pennsylvania.”
• Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is erecting its Farm for the City: Growing for Greater Good: “A temporary ‘farm-as-art installation’ transforms center city Philadelphia’s Thomas Paine Plaza into a civic commons for conversations about urban agriculture, food access, and community revitalization.”

There’s also a handful of recognizable names on the list of fellows, who each received $75,000 in direct support.

Among them are interdisciplinary artists Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips, “afrofuturist cultural producers” and the founders of the Black Quantum Futurism Collective; Michael Kuetemeyer and Anula Shetty, media artists who employ “socially engaged art-making practices to explore themes of place, cultural identity, memory, and hidden histories”; and Moon Molson, a filmmaker whose works explores “urban masculinity.”

Last year, 2016 fellow and filmmakers Tiona McClodden told us that to be a Pew fellow means financial stability — and a reason to stay in Philadelphia.

“This is a big deal,” McClodden said at the time. “I’ve lived in Philly for 10 years, and I hope to produce more work here because it’s a city that can be a sustainable city for artist.”

Here’s hoping this round of grantees will find the same sustainability.