- Credibility:
WICKER PARK — A national foundation awarded grants to support several Wicker Park and West Town theaters and arts organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The board of the Chicago-based Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation gave a total of $2 million to 175 grantees in the Chicago region and 40 in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
Grants range from $2,500 to $13,500 annually for Chicago organizations with budgets under $1 million. Grantees already received money to cover costs of this summer and will receive fall payments by June 1.
Here’s who received money in Wicker Park and West Town:
- Pegasus Theatre Chicago — $7,500/year
- Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art — $9,500/year
- Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center — $5,500/year
- The Artistic Home Acting Ensemble — $7,500/year
- Spudnik Press Cooperative — $7,500/year
- Filter Photo — $6,500/year
- Latitude Chicago — $8.500/year
- Heaven Gallery — $6,000/year
- Free Street Theater — $8,500/year
- Artemisia, A Chicago Theatre — $5,500/year
- Broken Nose Theatre — $6,000/year
- First Floor Theater — $6,000/year
- The New Colony — $5,500/year
- Trap Door Theatre — $7,500/year
- Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art — $7,500/year
The grants will renew in 2021, foundation officials said.
In addition to expediting individual grants, the Donnelley Foundation contributed $200,000 to the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund.
Last year, Hutch Pimentel, the artistic director of First Floor, told Block Club that theatre companies exist on very thin margins.
That’s one reason why First Floor joined Broken Nose and The New Colony in a unique co-working model inside The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave., in Wicker Park.
Artists “are holding on, but they’re holding on by the skin of their teeth,” Pimentel said.
Block Club Chicago’s coronavirus coverage is free for all readers. Block Club is an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom.
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