The Oakland City Council has approved $480,000 in grants to 17 Oakland-based nonprofit organizations and 20 individual artists through the city’s Cultural Funding Grant Program, Neighborhood Voices.
The city made the announcement Tuesday about the grants, which will support 772 distinct arts events and activities that will expose more than 110,000 participants to cultural programming.
The grant program seeks to bring Oaklanders together to create and support a sense of belonging within a community, to foster social connections that lift people’s spirits, to feed community well-being and offer visions for a collective future, according to the announcement.
Twenty individual artists each won $7,000 Neighborhood Voices awards:
Frederick Alvarado; Karla Brundage; Cristina Carpio; Darren Lee Colston; Maria De La Rosa; Elizabeth D. Foggie; Rachel-Anne Palacios; Laurie Polster; Hasain Rasheed; Kweku Kumi Rauf; Carmen Roman; Michael Roosevelt; Fernando Santos; Teofanny Octavia Saragi; Kimberly Sims-Battiste; Cleavon Smith; Lena Sok; Babette Thomas; Ja Ronn Thompson; Joseph Warner.
Additionally, 17 organizations each received $20,000 Neighborhood Voices awards:
Asian Health Services for Banteay Srei;
Dancers Group for dNaga GIRL Project;
Dancers Group for Dohee Lee Puri Arts;
Dancers Group for Grown Women Dance Collective;
East Oakland Youth Development Center;
Higher Gliffs for Endangered Ideas;
Junior Center of Art and Science;
Oakland Education Fund for Youth Beat;
Oakland Theater Project, Inc.;
Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice;