The San Francisco Multicultural Fellowship Program
The San Francisco Foundation is now recruiting for the 2010-2012 Multicultural Fellowship Program. The Multicultural Fellowship Program is a two-year full-time program that aims to increase diversity in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Successful candidates are young professionals of color with the promise and passion to create significant social change.
URGENT ACTION NEEDED: Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
The arts in Los Angeles are in crisis. The City of Los Angeles Budget and Finance Committee has put forward a motion to eliminate the Department of Cultural Affairs dedicated source of revenue.
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts urges you to voice your support to maintain the only dedicated revenue source for neighborhood art and culture in the City of Los Angeles.
ACTA Welcomes 23 Master Artist-Apprentice Teams to its Apprenticeship Program
Since 1999, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ (ACTA) Apprenticeship Program has supported California’s diverse living culture heritage with 185 contracts to outstanding folk and traditional artists. Now entering its tenth cycle, ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program encourages the continuation of the state’s living cultural heritage by contracting exemplary master artists to offer intensive training to qualified apprentices. Each contract will support a period of concentrated learning between six to twelve months for individuals who demonstrate commitment to and talent for a specific artistic tradition. Contracts of $3,000 are made with California-based master artists to cover master artist’s fees, supplies and travel. Participants work closely with ACTA staff to develop and document the apprenticeships, culminating in opportunities to publicly share results of the apprenticeship.
The 2010 Apprenticeship Program cohort of 46 artists reflects California’s breadth of cultural diversity and intergenerational learning, ranging from octogenarian master artists to teenage apprentices, spanning from Shasta to San Diego Counties. Thriving traditions supported through these apprenticeships reflect indigenous California cultural practices including Mono and Ohlone basketry, California saddlemaking, and art forms which have taken root in the United States hailing from regions including Cuba, Tibet, Republic of Congo, the Balkans, Cambodia, Japan, Armenia and Iran, India and China.
ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program is supported by the Columbia Foundation; the Walter & Elise Haas Fund; the James Irvine Foundation; the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation led by artist Lauren Bon; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support provided by the California Arts Council, the California Community Foundation, and the San Francisco Foundation.
ACTA Announces 2010 Living Cultures Grants Program Grantees
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) is pleased to announce that it is awarding $296,000 in grants to California nonprofit organizations to support exemplary projects in folk and traditional arts in the fifth annual round of its Living Cultures Grants Program. Forty-three grants across the state represent a diversity of community-based traditional arts including Native Californian Mono basketry in Madera and Fresno counties; an annual Dragon Boat Festival in San Diego; traditional taiko music at festivals in Shasta and Siskiyou counties; a Cambodian New Year celebration in San Bernardino; traditional African and African-influenced dance, drumming and song in San Francisco; and the celebration of Japanese culture in Santa Cruz. One hundred twenty-four applications were reviewed by a distinguished panel of cultural and community experts over a three-day period, and the final grant selections were approved by ACTA’s board of directors. ACTA’s funding partners include the Walter and Elise Haas Fund; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the Metabolic Studio, a direct chartable activity of the Annenberg Foundation led by artist Lauren Bon; and the James Irvine Foundation. ACTA is supported by the California Arts Council and is its statewide partner in serving the folk & traditional arts field.
“From Siskiyou County down to San Diego, our 2010 grantees span the state,” noted Amy Kitchener, ACTA Executive Director. “Our goal is to support the wealth of California’s diverse cultural traditions.” In its five-year history, the Living Cultures Grants Program has supported nearly 200 community-based projects with over $1 million. “We are reaching into many corners of the state,” continues Kitchener, “with small, strategic funding that makes a huge difference to our grantees.”
An Apprenticeship in Uzbek Doira
Abbos Kosimov has been a participant with dancer and apprentice Tara Catherine Pandeya in ACTA's 2009 Apprenticeship Program in an apprenticeship in Uzbek doira. Their apprenticeship focused on over a dozen doira rhythms and the accompanying dances, reinforcing the connection between Uzbek percussion and dance. The apprenticeship also allowed Pandeya to develop proficiency in interpreting doira rhythms and understanding Uzbek music composition and improvisation, reinforcing her studies with master dancers in Xinjiang Art University (Urumqi), and in Berlin and New York.
Trained from age ten with Ustad Tuychi Inagomov, Kosimov is one of few honored artists who have been officially recognized by the Uzbek head of state. Bearing the same illustrious title as Inagomov, Abbos arrived to the United States in 2005 having performed alongside artists including Zakir Hussain, Giovanni Hidalgo, Simon Shaheen, and Hassan Hakmoun at the World Music Institute.
