More Art. For More People. In More Places.

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More Art. For More People. In More Places.


Photo by Tara Keating

 

You step out your front door and walk past your local park on your way to run an errand.  Music hits your ears and you notice ballet dancers as you have never seen before – performing on a portable dance floor right in your local park.  You pause and walk toward the people who have stopped to experience the seemingly impromptu show.  As you circle around the back of the crowd, you take in the dancers’ movements and notice their strength and skill. Unable to leave this beautiful moment you find a place to sit and watch the rest of the performance.

Later, you are out for some exercise along the Schuylkill River Trail and enjoying views of the skyline when you happen upon musicians positioned throughout the natural landscape and performing a concert right there on the banks of the river. Intrigued, you stop to listen.

Months later, spurred by these two experiences, you venture to view a new installation that is animating and illuminating the Parkway as part of the Parkway100 celebration.  Projected images cascade down giant white domes installed in several spots along the Parkway and you and your family marvel at the images of flowers and plants that bring color, brightness, and vegetation to the dark winter evening.

Each of the above arts and culture events are not speculative, but entirely real, and available for visitors and residents of Philadelphia to partake in this fall and winter.  These projects: BalletX’s Pop-Up performances, Orchestra 2001’s Environmentally Sound concert series, and the Parkway Council and Association for Public Art’s presentation of Jennifer Steinkamp’s Winter Fountains for the Parkway, were funded by the Foundation’s grant making initiative New Audiences/New Places and seek to bring more arts and culture events out into more sites throughout Philadelphia.

This fall the city is not only benefitting from the three projects already mentioned, but will also see Opera Philadelphia transform Philadelphia into “a giant urban stage” with its O17 Festival, Headlong continue its The Quiet Circus performance residency at the Washington Avenue Pier, Mural Arts Philadelphia’s city-wide public art and history project Monument LabThe Philadelphia Orchestra present a free neighborhood chamber concert as part of a week-long series of community events, and the Philadelphia Assembled project arrive at Perelman Building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art after many months of working with an extensive network of community members across the city.

So please join us as we celebrate our city’s creativity, as we have transformative communal experiences, as we explore new neighborhoods, as we add our voices to community-wide conversations, and as we participate in the boundary-less language of art.

And if your arts and culture organization has a program that would fit the New Audiences/New Places funding eligibility, please visit our website and submit before the November 1st deadline for 2018 funding.

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