PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — While arts and theatre continue to reel from the impact of the pandemic, one of the city’s largest philanthropic organizations is feeding millions of dollars into local organizations to keep the creative juices flowing.
41 arts and cultural organizations in the region are receiving grants from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
"We've awarded 29 project grants, we have awarded 12 artist fellowships," said executive director Paula Marincola. "The total award is $10.5 million, and the money goes toward projects, performances, exhibitions."
Programs will be designed for in-person and digital experience. And Marincola says each project engages in substantial social or cultural issues.
One of the recipients is the Institute for Disabilities at Temple University. Lisa Sonneborn, director of the Institute's Media Arts and Culture, says a grant of $359,000 will be used to explore the Pennhurst State School and Hospital, which closed in 1987.
"We thought that there was room to tell the story of Pennhurst in a new way. And one that really centered on the voices of people with disabilities and their families," she said, "the people who were most directly impacted by the practice of institutionalization."
Currently Pennhurst is being used as a haunted house attraction, an idea that those in the disabled community find offensive, Sonneborn said.
The Theater Horizon in Norristown is another recipient.
Artistic director Nell Bang-Jensen said the $284,000 grant will be used to stage an adaptation of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," which will be called "Our Norristown." But she revealed it will be very different from the homogenous play Wilder presented.
"Norristown is a minority-majority city, and it has a very racially and ethnically diverse population, who are facing many challenges that people in the play were not facing," she explained.
Bang-Jensen also said the play's themes of daily life, love, marriage and death will be reversed. She said death is the symbol for the pandemic, and daily life is our re-emergence after this is over.