Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University to Receive $90,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $2 million in Creativity Connects grants as part of the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2018. Included in this announcement is a grant of $90,000 to the Wick Poetry Center for River Stanzas: A Collective Dreaming of the Cuyahoga. The Creativity Connects category advances the role of the arts in the nation’s creative ecosystem by supporting projects featuring partnerships between the arts and non-arts sectors.
“The variety and quality of these projects speaks to the wealth of creativity and diversity in our country,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Through the work of organizations such as the Wick Poetry Center in Kent, Ohio, NEA funding invests in local communities, helping people celebrate the arts wherever they are.”
With the River Stanzas project, an evolution of the award-winning Traveling Stanzas project, the Wick Poetry Center will examine and give voice to the many ways the river can sustain us creatively and teach us about our connection to the environment and our community.
“In June 2019 our community will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our river’s rebirth,” said David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center. “From the crisis of the river burning, we now have the opportunity to celebrate the success through poetry, art, and design, showcase our community’s vibrancy—its riverbanks and bike trails, its hiking paths and streetscapes, and rise to the challenge of conveying what we’ve learned to the stewards of the next generation."
Beginning in the summer of 2018 the Wick Poetry Center will conduct a series of intergenerational community forums, conversations, and writing workshops around the value of the river in our lives, its history, and our shared future. In collaboration with the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Akron and Kent Public Schools, Wick Poetry Center’s outreach team will lead field trips and workshops—“river walks” and “river talks”—to inspire our community to “dream the river” for its next 50 years.
For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news. Join the Twitter conversation at #NEASpring18.