Ragamala receives Building Demand for the Arts Exploration grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

November 23, 2015

THE DORIS DUKE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION AWARDS
$600,000 IN GRANTS TO ARTIST AND ARTS ORGANIZATION PARTNERSHIPS THAT BUILD DEMAND FOR THE ARTS

Eighteen Collaborations Nationwide Receive Support to Explore Strategies That Will Reach New Audiences and Increase Demand for Jazz, Dance and Theatre

NEW YORK, NY, November 17, 2015 —The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) today announced the 18 teams of performing artists and arts organizations selected to receive a total of $600,000 in Exploration grants through the foundation’s Building Demand for the Arts program. This group of grantees is the third and final cohort to receive Exploration funding through the program, which launched in 2013 and supports inventive arts collaborations aiming to understand and connect more deeply with a particular audience through the fields of jazz, dance and/or theatre. This year’s grantees represent a wide geographic span and interest in reaching diverse target audiences such as inner-city young adults, specific ethnic groups and the national deaf community.

“We are delighted to support this last cohort of artists and organizations as they imagine new ways to build demand for the arts,” said Ben Cameron, program director for the Arts at DDCF. “Broadening our thinking about who our audiences are and how we connect with them is enormously challenging. We look forward to the bold ideas these teams generate and the impact they will make on their respective fields.”

The Building Demand for the Arts program offers two types of grants: Exploration grants, which support investigative conversations between artists and organizations about ways to build demand for the performing arts, and Implementation grants, which support the implementation of previously crafted plans to build arts demand. The next Implementation grants funding specific projects of artist-organization partnerships will be announced in early 2016.