Self Help Graphics & Art Selected to Participate in Wallace Arts Initiative
By Jennifer Cuevas
Images courtesy of Wallace Foundation.
Self Help Graphics & Art has been selected to participate in the Wallace arts initiative! Read the NY Times Article here. This initiative is part of the first phase of The Wallace Foundation’s new five-year arts initiative focused on arts organizations of color, created as part of the foundation’s efforts to foster equitable improvements in the arts. Following an open call in 2021 that drew over 250 applicants, SHG was selected as one of 18 nonprofit organizations representing a diverse range of artistic disciplines, geographic locations, and communities served. Alongside the other selected organizations, SHG will receive five years of funding to develop and pursue a project to address a strategic challenge. Researchers will document each organization’s work with the aim of developing useful insights about the relationship between community orientation, resilience, and relevance. The grant will ultimately support the sustainability of organization.
Originally announced in July 2021 as a $53 million endeavor involving about a dozen organizations, Wallace has expanded the initiative to include additional grantees and planned funding of up to $100million across five years. While Wallace’s support will not eliminate the need for the other funding that sustains SHG and the other grantee organizations, it does help provide the time and resources to explore new approaches to urgent challenges, including: succession planning; developing equity-centered practices; developing values-aligned business models;increasing visibility; and creating culturalspaces that nurture the creativity and well-being of artists and communitiesserved.
First, SHG will embark alongside the other grantees on a planning year for their individual projects in partnership with Wallace, researchers, consultants, and financial management advisors. While The specifics of each organization's projects are unique, there are some commonalities and opportunities for shared learning and support. Grantees will work with Wallace to name the initiative and identify any technical supports they might need before beginning four years of project implementation
The Community Orientation Action Research Team (COART), made up of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Virginia, has been funded to co-develop the initiative’s research design with the grantees. The research is expected to explore the initiative’s guiding question through the lens of the projects that grantees will implement over four years. Additionally, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is overseeing a fellowship program for 18 early career qualitative researchers, one of whom will be paired with SHG to develop an ethnography that documents the organization’s history, practices, and culture. Read about participating grantees here.
The initiative builds on research going back to the 1970s suggesting that community orientation, along with high-quality artistic programming, may be foundational to organizational health. Community orientation has been described, across the literature, as preserving or presenting the artforms of a particular racial, ethnic, or tribal group, supporting artists from the focus community, developing the cultural workforce of that community, and advocating for the community within broader socio-political contexts, among other activities. In addition to building an understanding of what community orientation looks like in different organizations, Wallace hopes to learn with the organizations how they define relevance and resilience. For more information, please click here.
About the Grantee Selection Process
To select the first group of grantees, Wallace considered applications submitted from organizations across the visual and performing arts fields, media arts, and community-based organizations focused on artistic practice with budget sizes between $500,000 and $5 million. The foundation sought to create a group of funded organizations serving a variety of communities, focusing on projects that leverage community orientation and addressing different kinds of strategic challenges.
About Self Help Graphics & Art
Since its incorporation in 1973, SHG has produced more than 2,000 art print editions, including 62 atelier projects and exhibitions all over the world. The organization remains dedicated to the production, interpretation and distribution of prints and other art media by Chicana/o and Latinx artists; and its multidisciplinary intergenerational programs promote artistic excellence and empower community by providing access to working space, tools, training and resources. Nearly 50 years later, SHG continues to foster emerging Chicana/o and Latinx artists through its world-class printmaking practice and supports the role of artists as leaders, both within its organization and the community. For more information, visit www.selfhelpgraphics.com.
About the Wallace Foundation
The Wallace Foundation’s mission is to foster equity and improvements in learning and enrichment for young people, and in the arts for everyone. Wallace works nationally, with a focus on the arts, K-12 education leadership and youth development. In all of its work, Wallace seeks to benefit both its direct grantees as well as the fields in which it works by developing and broadly sharing relevant, useful knowledge that can improve practice and policy. For more information, please visit the Foundation’s Knowledge Center at wallacefoundation.org.
Jennifer Cuevas is SHG’s Communications Consultant. She is an solopreneur and cultural arts producer, with a passion for the arts and social impact.
Wallace Foundation contributed to this story.