The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Department of Cultural Affairs paired with the NYC mayor’s office to distribute one time $5,000 grants to over 3,000 NYC artists in late September. The funds, from a new $25 million recovery initiative designed to help NYC-based working artists who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, were received by Gallatin faculty Kathryn Posin, Meera Nair, Judith Sloan, and staff member KC Trommer.
The grant for the Kathryn Posin Dance Company was used to create a performance at Manhattan’s Gene Frankel Theater. Meera Nair’s grant supported Stories from a Plague Year, providing space for Tibetan community members to share stories and lived experiences of working, struggle, illness, grief, and experiences with anti-Asian hate, as NYC-based immigrants, workers, students, and families living through the pandemic. Judith Sloan and Alicia Waller (MA ’17) presented “Songs and Poems: Of Migration, Refuge, and Finding Home,” a public performance that will be held at the outdoor stage of the Jamaica Performing Arts Center in Queens. KC Trommer’s grant will support running the 2021-2022 Red Door Series, a reading and meditation series offered twice a month at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Heights, Queens.