Grantee
Approaches
to Jerome
Foundation’s
Values and
Practices
Laura Ortman (as part of a performance with Raven Chacon, on the occasion of Nicholas Galanin: In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra). Presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY, November 5, 2024. Photo: Manuel Molina Martagón, courtesy Public Art Fund, NY.
Jerome Foundation welcomes grantees, artists, and culture bearers to self-define what these values and practices mean to them. The following are examples shared by grantees:
Arts Organization Grantee Approaches
To Jerome Foundation’s values and practices of creative risk, innovation, humility, belonging and nurture, equity, love and respect, learning, and storytelling
The following are examples shared by arts organizations:
- Building intergenerational mentorship networks and collaborative co-creation opportunities across early-, mid-, and established-career artists.
- Supporting early career and commercially untested artists by prioritizing experimentation over revenue or ticket sales pressures.
- Providing post-residency support, sustained access to studio space, and professional equipment tailored to individual artist needs.
- Creating safe havens for experimentation, offering technical, creative, and emotional support.
- Integrating incarcerated or otherwise marginalized artists into organizational decision-making processes.
- Centering the work of artists historically excluded (BIPOC, women, non-binary, queer, diasporic, Native, incarcerated).
- Supporting artists whose work resists assimilation into Western norms or mainstream markets.
- Disrupting dominant narratives in male- or white-centered artistic fields.
- Promoting cross-cultural, cross-community, and intercultural collaboration.
- Embedding equity-first program designs in structure and practices: removing barriers, uplifting complexity, and centering marginalized community-rooted perspectives.
- Supporting Black liberation, diasporic storytelling, and community-centered cultural production.
- Elevating dual-presence narratives that navigate home culture alongside mainstream contexts.
- Prioritizing slowness, rest, and spaciousness over transactional or output-focused measures to avoid production and commercial pressures.
- Valuing iterative, relational process, in both artistic and organizational structures, investing in process over product, honoring artistic uncertainty and improvisation.
- Encouraging risk-taking, playfulness, and real-time discovery in artistic creation.
- Emphasizing organizational process design mirroring artistic process.
- Championing and supporting cross-genre, multi-disciplinary, anti-disciplinary, hybrid, experimental, boundary-defying, and unclassifiable artistic projects across artistic fields.
- Integrating community art, public art, social practice, and interdisciplinary collaboration focused on form not product.
- Combining traditional, experimental, and emerging technologies in artistic creation (e.g., XR, multimedia, virtual/augmented reality).
- Practicing collaborative and decentralized curation, where artists and communities co-determine outcomes.
- Leaning into institutional adaptability in defining roles and strategies responsive to artist and community-identified issues and ideas.
- Exploring alternative governance models (e.g., sociocracy, collective leadership) and non-hierarchical structures.
- Experimentally shifting business models (membership → advocacy, pivoting organizational structures to reduce barriers).
- Expanding audiences through cross-career, intergenerational, and intercultural convenings.
- Encouraging civic dialogues and community-building through participatory, socially engaged, or public-facing projects.
- Engaging local, national, and international communities of artists and peers in collaborative programs in schools, neighborhoods, parks, and other community sites.
- Supporting innovation across literary, cinematic, performative, and genre-blurring forms.
- Integrating music, food, social justice dialogue, and digital/VR/AR into artistic creation.
- Embracing ephemeral, politically vulnerable, or non-commercial art forms.
- Encouraging embodied, decolonial, and participatory methods in theater, dance, and performance.
- Encouraging early-career artists in critical inquiry into technology.
- Supporting digital-first creation, presentation, and access models.
- Enabling open distribution of innovative work to broaden access.
- Using artist feedback to drive program expansion and internal policy changes.
- Encouraging multiplicity, collective authorship, and adaptive structures in program design.
- Piloting cross-sector partnerships, research, and iterative program models.
- Serving as an incubator for risk-taking, experimentation, and field-wide innovation.
- Embracing relational experimentation as infrastructure: trust-based, DIY, or informal spaces for creativity.
- Developing new pipelines for audience engagement and artistic mentorship.
- Using art to explore social, racial, cultural, and justice issues.
- Linking artistic creation to placemaking, human transformation, and healing.
- Integrating sustainability, rural connection, and land-based practice in artistic production.
- Embedding activism, civic imagination, and equity-driven experimentation into all levels of program and field design.
Artist and Culture Bearer Grantee Approaches
To Jerome Foundation’s values and practices of creative risk, innovation, humility, belonging and nurture, equity, love and respect, learning, and storytelling
The following are examples shared by grantees:
- Bringing people together for collaborative problem-solving that transforms differences of perspective into understanding and connection.
- Encouraging civic engagement and ensuring that marginalized voices are represented in public decision-making.
- Engaging communities in shaping social and political narratives through art and dialogue.
- Providing public platforms and shared spaces where people can gather, listen, and foster empathy through collective storytelling.
- Modeling creative ways to connect and navigate challenges in public, participatory contexts.
- Fostering immersive cultural storytelling experiences where people feel valued and represented.
- Creating visibility and giving voice to experiences of survival and untold histories, revealing and exploring issues of race, power, and inequality.
- Revitalizing cultures and languages and empowering communities to reclaim their stories and spaces.
- Doing truth-telling around identity and intersectionality in complex ways.
- Confronting social issues with direct, unfiltered approaches.
- Developing nuanced narratives that offer inspiration and visibility for communities too often excluded, marginalized, or underrepresented in cultural production.
- Combining traditional art forms with new technologies, interactive media, and community-driven storytelling.
- Redefining the boundaries of physical and emotional engagement in live art to provoke dialogue about vulnerability and shared humanity.
- Engaging in culturally specific, experimental practices or techniques.
- Reinventing popular genres or forms to include diverse perspectives.
- Crossing genres and cultural practices to redefine how art engages the public.
- Adopting experimental forms of creation, distribution, and presentation that connect more directly with audiences.
- Challenging artistic and social norms to open new imaginative and expressive possibilities.
- Democratizing artistic creation by involving participants in both design and execution, transforming notions of who belongs.
- Developing collaborative environments where diverse perspectives are welcomed and valued.
- Making art experiences accessible to both broad and specific audiences.
- Increasing accessibility to art and culture, especially for those in remote or underserved areas.
- Inspiring conversation and engagement across generations and communities.
- Advancing social change through creative collaboration and equitable participation.
- Positioning artists as leaders and forward-thinkers who can inspire and shape change.
- Stepping out of comfort zones and attempting new approaches, leading to growth.
- Embracing uncertainty and potential failure as part of creative evolution.
- Taking bold actions in pursuit of visionary ideas that challenge racism, inequity, and systemic oppression.
- Shifting ways of working to adapt to changing realities while maintaining integrity and courage.
- Cultivating resilience and responsiveness in the face of obstacles or transformation.
- Challenging systemic inequalities and advocating for social change.
- Providing artmaking opportunities that address trauma, promote emotional healing, and strengthen well-being.
- Promoting environmental sustainability, local economies, and community vitality through creative practice.
- Enhancing community pride, welcoming newcomers, and revitalizing neglected or divided spaces.
- Using art as a means of regeneration—for individuals, ecosystems, and collective futures.
- Learning and modeling new ways to adapt to changing environmental, social, and cultural conditions.
- Building new worlds and reimagining existing ones as acts of communal care and creative resistance.
- Creating trust and interdependence among collaborators and community members.
- Sharing vulnerability as a tool for connection, authenticity, and empathy.
- Practicing collective decision-making that honors multiple truths and shared accountability.
- Cultivating communal care, repair, and imagination as foundations for resilience and belonging.
- Having a personal connection to the creative content and relationships with those involved and most directly impacted by the work.
- Boosting local economies, promoting environmental sustainability, and strengthening social cohesion.