Charlotte Street Foundation

The Charlotte Street Awards to Generative Performing Artists supports artists living in the Greater Kansas City Metro Area (Clay, Jackson, Johnson, Platte & Wyandotte Counties). Launched in 2008, these awards specifically recognize innovative, generative artists working in the fields of dance, theater/performance art, music/sound & hybrid/interdisciplinary/new media versions thereof. These awards recognize generative artists, meaning individuals actively creating original, new work in their fields- i.e. they are composers, playwrights, choreographers- in addition to very often being performers as well. All eligible artists are encouraged to apply. Two Awards of $8,500 each will be distributed.

APPLICANT TECH HELP SESSIONS:
Need technical help uploading/submitting audio and visual files with your Generative Performing Award Application? Charlotte Street is hosting two free three-hour sessions providing one-on-one technical assistance to applicants at the Charlotte Street offices, 1000 West 25th Street, on Wednesday, January 25, 3-6pm, and Thursday, February 9, 5-8pm. PRE-REGISTRATION REQUIRED.

TO REGISTER FOR TECH HELP:
Send an email to info@charlottestreet.org and type “Performing Awards Application Assistance” in the subject line. In the email, include your full contact information and availability during the two time blocks above. Charlotte Street Foundation will reply with confirmation email. NOTE: these sessions are to provide technical assistance submitting PREPARED audio and video documentation; advisement on the choice of work samples to submit or on the editing of documentation will NOT be provided.

Download the full details or go directly to the application.

Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project is pleased to partner with the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) to present The DIning Room Project, a multifaceted project serving as a platform for the exploration of issues of hunger, sustenance, consumption, public health, sustainability, cultural symbolism within various traditions, and food and the meal’s usefulness as vehicle for communication and creative expression.

As a partner and collaborator on this project, Charlotte Street’s Paragraph gallery (an Urban Culture Project venue) will be transformed into a site for research, installations, conversations, and a diverse range of activities, events, performances, presentations, and meals.  This Dining Room Project: Potluck Smorgasbord begins with an opening reception on March 18, 6-9pm, featuring several one-time only offerings. In addition, it will serve as a colleciton site for Harvesters. Click here for a press release specifically related to the exhibition at Paragraph.

New programming will be featured every week, including off-site tours, dinners and excursions. Click here for a full schedule (in progress), and watch for updates as well as new documentation of activities each week.

The KCJMCA Espten Gallery at Village Shalom’s exhibition,The Dining Room Project: Art, Food, and the Ritual of Eating opens Sunday, March 20, 2-4pm. A catalog/cookbook  produced by KCJMCA, will document the whole project and feature recipes and texts by artists, curators, and food writers.

Read this press release for more about the whole project.

View archives of past Dining Room Project events and gallery wall texts

Paragraph Gallery hours are Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturdays 12-5pm and Thursdays 11am-6pm.

Over Again presents the work of New York-based Alison Brady, and Washington DC-based Sarah Knobel, emerging artists quickly building international reputations for photo- and video-based works that wrestle with cultural expectations, ideas of normality, and feelings of anxiety and isolation related to their experiences as women transitioning from carefree to more careful adulthood. It opens Friday, March 18th, 6-9PM at Urban Culture Project Space, 21 E. 12th Street, KCMO.

The exhibition features individual photos from each artist as well as the centerpiece of the exhibition: a new, collaborative video installation, Over Again, which combines aspects of absurdity and wry humor with a low-tech sensibility to create a surreal, fraught space in which the anxious uncertainty of the everyday is explored.  Portraying the activities and imaginings of a housewife within her domestic environment, this work examines issues surrounding aging, work, marriage and motherhood in a manner humorous and disturbing, mundane and cathartic. Visit www.overagain.info for more about Over Again, including a video teaser.

Read Full Press Release.

Project Space hours at Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturdays 12-5pm and Thursdays 11am-6pm.

Charlotte Street Foundation is currently seeking applications from artists interested in being considered for its Urban Culture Project Studio Residency Program for Visual and Performing Artists, which provides free studio spaces in downtown Kansas City to talented and dedicated area artists in need of space in which to work among a community of peers.

The Studio Residency Program currently includes studios at: Center City Square, 1100 Main, 5th floor (providing large, shared studio/rehearsal space for several performing artists/groups and private studios for 12 visual artists); pARTnership Place, 906 Grand, 13th floor (providing space for 7 visual artists in a large, open space); and Town Pavilion, 1100 Walnut, 6th floor (providing private studios for 8 visual artists.)

Studios are granted to selected artists for one year terms. No full time students will be considered. Studios are work spaces only; the program does not provide residential accommodations. The studios do not include access to specialized equipment, tools, materials, etc. A dance stage with Marley floor is provided for dancers/choreographers.

Deadline is Monday, February 28, 2011, for a limited number of studio spaces becoming available this spring.  Applications are being administered through http://www.callforentry.org. Read full details here.

Applications for the second cycle of project-based Rocket Grants are now open at www.callforentry.org. A total of $40,000 will be awarded this year, with up to $4,000 for each selected project. Deadline for applications for is April 1 2011. Funds will be awarded in June 2011 and successful artists and artist groups will have one calendar year to complete their projects.

DOWNLOAD 2011 APPLICATION GUIDELINES HERE. Further information about the Rocket Grants, including profiles of first year projects as well as assistance for completing applications, is available on the Rocketblog. Click the “About” tab for access to online tutorials, FAQ’s, budget forms and more.

Two upcoming launch sessions will provide more information about Rocket Grants:

• Saturday January 29, 1 PM at the Spencer Museum of Art auditorium / 1301 Mississippi Street, Lawrence, KS
• Saturday February 5, 2 PM at the H&R Block ArtSpace / 16 E 43rd Street, Kansas City, MO.

In addition, artists from throughout the 80-mile eligibility zone will have access to short one-on-one appointments with Rocket Grants staff to discuss questions about their specific applications. These will be held at various locations in Kansas City, Lawrence, Topeka, Warrensburg and St. Joseph. Click here for more about the outreach sessions.

Rocket Grants fund projects that exist outside of established art venues, occur outside of traditional forms of support, challenge traditional methods of production or presentation, add energy and diversity to the field of arts activity in our area, and provide opportunities for the creative growth of those involved. Funding for Rocket Grants comes from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The program is implemented through a collaboration between the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City MO, and the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence KS.

THE DINING ROOM PROJECT: Intersections of Food, Art, and the Rituals of Eating is a collaborative project initiated by the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA), which will include exhibitions at Urban Culture Project’s Paragraph Gallery (A Potluck Smorgasbord; March 18-May 7, 2011) and KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom (March 20-May 15, 2011).  With this project, the traditions, rituals, structures, and conviviality of the dining room become a platform for the exploration of issues such as hunger, sustainability, public health, consumption, the origins of food, its history of cultural symbolism, and its ever-evolving role as a vehicle for communication, community-building, and creative expression.

The participation of artists, designers, historians, scholars, educators, planners, farmers, gardeners, activists, chefs, caterers, foodies, foragers, and other creative people of all kinds is invited. Each exhibition will center around a 16-foot dining room table, created by artist Peter Warren.  At and around these tables a series of participant-driven activities, events, and meals will unfold. Proposals are invited for multiple aspects of these exhibitions, including: THE HARVEST (at Paragraph): soliciting, collecting, organizing, displaying and/or otherwise considering the canned goods and other non-perishables to be gathered on behalf of Harvesters food bank; THE TABLE (at Paragraph): the creation of individual place settings, to displayed on the dinner table and appropriate for use;  THE SMORGASBORD (at Paragraph + Epsten Gallery): activities of all kinds to take place during the course of the exhibitions that relate to, are inspired by, and/or will center around the dining room table, including lectures, discussions, presentations, demonstrations, workshops, temporary installations, live performances, readings, potluck dinners, off-site excursions, etc. Submissions of personally, culturally, or creatively significant recipes and/or personal photographs or videos of memorable dinners and dining-related activities and experiences for public display in THE KITCHEN (at Paragraph) are also invited.

Click here to download the complete call for proposals and participation, including much more information about The Dining Room Project. Proposals are due Tuesday, January 25, 2011.

For the first time in history, Charlotte Street Foundation is inviting applications from all eligible artists wishing to be considered for the 2011 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards, which recognize and support outstanding artists based in Kansas City with unrestricted cash grants, an exhibition of their work, and related exposure. (Previously, consideration has been given only to artists nominated by a panel of Awards Advisors and Community Nominators.)  It is expected that three awards of $10,000 will be distributed in 2011. Deadline for applications is November 1, 2010.

To be eligible, applicants must: Be a visual artist who has resided (not just worked or maintained studio space) in the five-country Metropolitan Kansas City area (Jackson, Clay, Platte, Wyandotte, Johnson counties) since at least November 1, 2009; Be 21 years of age or older as of November 1, 2010; If applicable, have graduated from undergraduate school prior to June 30, 2009 (note, applicants need not have attended college); Not be a full-time student or plan to be a full time student during the period November 1, 2010-June 30, 2011. Artists who have previously received Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards are NOT elibilble to apply.

Submissions will be considered by the Awards Selection Panel through a two-phased process, culminating with in-person studio visits to a short-list of semi-finalists on February 2&3, 2011. Artists submitting applications should plan to be available on these two days if selected as a semi-finalist. Semi-finalists will be notified by January 15, 2011.

The Awards Selection Panel will be comprised of: Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Kris Kiramatsu, independent curator based in Los Angeles/curator for the Collection of Eileen Harris Norton; Stacy Switzer, Artistic Director, Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO; Chris Cook, Director/Curator, Salina Art Center, Salina, KS; Jeremy Mikolajczak, Gallery Director/Curator, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO.

ALL artists are required to complete their submission through CaFE (callforentry.org). To view the complete guidelines and access the online application, click here.

Read press release.

Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project, in collaboration with City Center Square, seeks proposals from artists interested in being considered for a window installation commission. The commissioned work will occupy a large ground-floor window niche at City Center Square, located on the north side of the street just west of 12th and Main in downtown Kansas City.

In relation to the United States Post Office located within City Center Square, the installation should engage the theme of mail or the post office in some manner. Creative, innovative, artistic approaches to this subject are encouraged. The selected artist will be awarded a materials budget of $500 and an artist stipend of $500 to support the creation of the final project. The installation will remain on view for approximately one year.

Deadline for proposals is Monday, August 9, 2010. Click here for full details.

Final selections have been made for the first recipients of Rocket Grants, a brand new funding opportunity available to artists who live within an 80-mile radius of downtown Kansas City, which includes Lawrence, KS. Rocket Grants are specifically intended to encourage work that is inventive and “under the radar”, and that engages or benefits an audience somewhere other than in a museum or art gallery. The long-term goal of the program is to not only encourage emerging and non-traditional art practices in the Kansas City region, but also to contribute to a thriving artists’ community. Selections were therefore evaluated not only on the artistic merits of the proposed projects, but also on their capacity to stimulate further growth in a diverse and supportive art ecology.

Because some applicants requested less than the full $4,000, a total of 12 awards were granted. Click here for the list of selected artists and brief project summaries.

Rocket Grants are supported by a $40,000 regional regranting award from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and are implemented by a partnership between the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, and the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence. The five-member panel responsible for selecting this year’s recipients from more than 80 applications was composed of national and local interdisciplinary artists and arts professionals, including Mel Ziegler, Adriane Herman, Hesse McGraw, So Yeon Park and Pat Alexander.

Read full press release. 

Read Kansas City Star article, “Rocket Grants Boost Local Artists…” by Alice Thorson, June 6, 2010.

Read in-depth descriptions of the 12 Rocket Grant supported projects.

Charlotte Street Foundation is seeking qualified, motivated, creative, detail-oriented, responsible applicants for the positions of: 1) Marketing, Communications & Digital Assets Coordinator (half-time) & 2) Preparator/Facilities Manager (3/4 time).

CSF’s Marketing, Communications & Digital Assets Coordinator will be responsible for implementing CSF’s marketing efforts (both print and web-based), coordinating its artist application processes, and managing its media and photo/video documentation archive.  Download complete job description, desired qualifications, and details.

CSF’s Preparator/Facilities Manager will be responsible for the day to day management, operation, and maintenance of its Urban Culture Project exhibition and performance spaces and Studio Residency Program facilities, including coordination and oversight of installation and deinstallation processes with exhibiting and performing artists and serving as day to day liaison to studio resident artists. Download complete job description, desired qualifications, and details.

Interested individuals should submit a letter of intent noting which position they are applying for and describing qualifications and interest in the position, and a professional resume.  DEADLINE: FRIDAY, MAY 7. Please email to Kathy@charlottestreet.org or mail to Charlotte Street Foundation, PO Box 10263, Kansas City, MO 64171. NO CALLS PLEASE.