ArtsMemphis program receives esteemed national award

Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education in America, announced that ArtsMemphis Community Engagement Fellowship of Memphis, Tennessee, has been awarded the esteemed Robert E. Gard award. The award recognizes and celebrates exemplary work at the intersection of the arts and community life. Linda Steele, Chief Community Engagement Officer with ArtsMemphis, accepted the award on behalf ArtsMemphis Community Engagement Fellowship. 

The ArtsMemphis Community Engagement Fellows include artists, arts managers, neighborhood leaders, and residents, creating projects that use the arts as a vehicle for social change and empowerment in specific, disenfranchised Memphis neighborhoods. Fellows learn to listen to the needs of residents and collaborate on artistic projects that spring from and uplift the neighborhoods where they are based.

Classes, fieldwork, and site visits in Memphis and around the country are the core of the roughly six-month program. Fellows explore such relevant concepts as creative placemaking, reimagining neighborhoods, community impact,sustainable fundraising, and cross-sector partnerships. Fellows also produce arts-based project proposals, along with their colleagues and program faculty, designed to create lasting community development and build cultural equity.
 
“ArtsMemphis integrated the arts into their communities in a meaningful way, through innovative projects and transformative practices,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “Through this work, they have positively impacted the lives of residents and strengthen their communities as a whole, and their commitment is deserving of this recognition.” 
 
Americans for the Arts members voted through the spring and the winning project has been announced at the 2016 Annual Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Robert E. Gard award is named in honor of one of the founding fathers of the local arts movement and a champion of the arts role in the creation and maintenance of healthy, vibrant, and equitable communities.