There’s nothing better than delivering good news. Though single malt scotch comes close. But I digress.
Crosscut is thrilled to announce a new grant from The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation that will support and expand our coverage of arts and culture. We are one of 53 lucky grantees in the Foundation’s new $6.28 million grant cycle — and we heartily thank the Foundation and congratulate our fellow recipients.
“The goal of our grants is to create meaningful changes in communities by partnering with exceptional organizations and leaders who are bold enough to reinvent the world,” said Susan M. Coliton, vice president of the Foundation. “We are excited to partner with Crosscut and support their initiatives to drive meaningful impact in their community.”
Those Crosscut “initiatives” Sue Coliton is referring to include The Weekend List, which debuted last Thursday. Count on using this habit-forming weekend guide to Seattle's cultural good life, curated by our new contributing arts editor Florangela Davila. (Btw: We're still test-marketing names; this week it's "Better Than a Hangover." Your thoughts welcome.)
We’ll add ballast and insight to our arts coverage with features — like this week's on Spectrum Dance Theater's Trayvon Martin-inspired "The Minstrel Show Revisited" — in which artists discuss their own work and the work of artists they admire. (Why should critics have all the fun?)
And then there’s Fix This! The Civic Artist.
Artists don’t just make pretty things. They solve problems — in creative, holistic and usually pretty cost-effective ways. We need people like that at times like this when our region — hell, the whole world — is changing at a blistering pace. So, we’ll be conscripting local artists (and paying them!) to develop creative, whimsically practical solutions to some of our most persistent and vexing civic problems: homelessness, character-destroying development (on Capitol Hill, West Seattle, pick a neighborhood), gridlock in Olympia, and don’t get me started on those god-awful ferry announcements. We’ll present their solutions on Crosscut.com and at public events. We hope you'll join us. (Meantime, send us your favorite vexing civic problem.)
Since 1998, the Allen Family Foundation has invested nearly half a billion dollars in an effort to improve communities in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, recognizing and underwriting the kind of brave thinkers who promise to be catalysts for change. We are proud to be in that group. And we will not let the Allen Foundation or our readers down.
