LADADSpace Receives NEA Grant

 [Los Angeles, CA] — National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced on April 16 that Los Angeles Downtown Arts District Space (LADADSpace) is one of 886 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. LADADSpace is recommended for a $30,000 grant to support the interior design of the Arts District Center for the Arts (ADCA). NEA Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, “The NEA is pleased to announce that Los Angeles Downtown Arts District Space is recommended for an NEA Art Works grant. These NEA-supported projects will not only have a positive impact on local economies, but will also provide opportunities for people of all ages to participate in the arts, help our communities to become more vibrant, and support our nation’s artists as they contribute to our cultural landscape.” The ADCA will open its doors in the summer of 2015 at One Santa Fe and will feature a gallery, theater and screening room.  Los Angeles Downtown Arts District Space (LADADSpace) is a home-grown non-profit that has depended primarily on its own resources since its inception a decade ago to create art installations and underwrite local theater in its downtown community. The Arts District Center for the Arts will present challenging new dramatic works by emerging playwrights in its theater space, which will be managed by Padua Playwrights (paduaplaywrights.com) under the direction of Guy Zimmerman.  The theater will be convertible to a screening room for experimental film and video. The gallery will host exhibitions of the works of downtown Los Angeles artists and invite emerging artists from comparable urban centers around the world to exhibit and engage in a creative exchange with local artists. The mission of LADADSpace is to preserve the Arts District as a true creative community by offering new space for theater, art and experimental cinema.  “We will never again see artists’ lofts for 25-cents a square foot in the neighborhood,” says LADADSpace President Tim Keating, “but if we can create new venues for the arts, maybe we can keep enough of the arts in the Arts District to justify that name.” According to Keating, the ADCA will not only offer artists a venue, it will be a “petri dish for the arts, encouraging collaborations by artists working in different media.  We’d like to see what happens if the gallery bleeds over into the theater.  It would be interesting to create installations that involve the entire space.” LADADSpace is also participating with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Actors Fund to offer 88 units of affordable artist housing (a project underwritten in part by a previous NEA grant to the DCA) and sponsors a mural initiative that seeks to encourage and support the creation or original works of art by local artists and muralists of international stature. The mural program includes a residency for out-of-town artists and an apprenticeship that will pair at-risk youth with accomplished muralists. LADADSpace is working with other downtown arts non-profits that will have opportunities to program the theater and gallery at the Arts District Center for the Arts. They include Cornerstone Theatre, Self-Help Graphics, Art Share L.A. and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). In addition to the donations from production companies filming in the Arts District, LADADSpace has received grants from the DEW Foundation and Warner Bros. NEA Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and enhancement of the livability of communities through the arts.  The NEA received 1,515 eligible applications under the Art Works category, requesting more than $76 million in funding. Of those applications, 886 are recommended for grants for a total of $25.8 million. For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA website at arts.gov.