Salt Lake City’s Utah Arts Alliance has been awarded a $25,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support ILLUMINATE: Light Art + Creative Technology Festival. This project will support artists wishing to present their works at the festival’s new location at Library Square. Utah Arts Alliance’s project is among 1,125 projects across America totaling more than $26.6 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2022 funding.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation with these grants, including Utah Art Alliance, providing opportunities for all of us to live artful lives,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “The Arts contribute to our individual well-being, the well-being of our communities, and to our local economies. The arts are also crucial to helping us make sense of our circumstances from different perspectives as we emerge from the pandemic and plan for a shared new normal informed by our examined experience.”
ILLUMINATE is a free celebration of innovation and imagination for the community, art lovers, and families. Artists working with technology and using light as their medium will use the city as their canvas and create projection-mapped artwork, light art displays and exhibits at the festival’s new location at Library Square and The Leonardo. Projection areas include some of Salt Lake City’s architectural gemstones, The City and County Building and the Downtown Public Library.
Applications are now being accepted for artist grants. This year’s theme is Mother Nature of Light, a look at environmentalism through the ecofeminist lens. We will explore local issues, like the diminishing Great Salt Lake and global themes of healing and change. The theme is open to the interpretation of the artists submitting to present. We look forward to seeing the stories you want to tell.