As a small awards program, our smART ventures grant encourages innovation and widens cultural participation, particularly by individuals, organizations, and communities that may not qualify for other funding programs.

Accepting applications year-round, smART ventures is flexible, inclusive, and simple. It provides funding ranging from $500 to $1,000. The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture encourages small active investments that can have big impacts.

Here are the 2020 smART Ventures awardees:

• Abiola Akanni, $1,000.00 – A body positive, hip hop yoga flow in the comfort of your own home with a virtual TV class series to provide the community with healthy and cultural options during the public health crisis.  
• Anything is Possible Theatre Company, $1,000.00 – Flying Blind is a performance piece created for, with and about the Blind/Low Vision community and presented virtually as an audio recording during the Washington Council for the Blind Conference.  
• Bukola Badipe-Hart, $1,000.00 – Conducted Interviews with members of the Central District in order to collect words of resilience and empowerment for the Black Community as part of a Public Art Project.  
• Megan Becker, $850.00 – Concord is dance film virtual event inspired by current issues and making positive changes in society featuring local dancers.  
• Robyn Bjornson, $800.00 – Prayer-form-Dance: If the earth could speak is a virtual dance performance with invitation for the public to dance in Nature and post their videos to celebrate Earth Day.  
• Anuhea Brown, $600.00 – A Remounting of the play TumbleWEEDS, a week-long workshop and rehearsal process with a team of actors, a director, and dramaturg and digital performance.  
• Vania C. Bynum, $1,000.00 – We Inspire Humanity is a virtual performance series featuring dance to uplift and connect community during the pandemic.  
• Minh Carrico, $1,000.00 – Circles of Identity – A Non Model Minority is an installation showing a retrospective of the artist’s work at a venue in Little Saigon.  
• Juliet Dang, $925.00 – Vietology Magazine, an online magazine that highlights Vietnamese artists, designers and entrepreneurs to provide more exposure to inspirational Vietnamese women.  
• Emerald City Music, $900.00 – This is Beethoven is a collaborative digital arts festival featuring twenty multidisciplinary arts organizations from the Seattle-area. The festival celebrates the resilience of the arts and its role in our current time.  
• Emerald Ensemble, $550.00 – Emerald Choral Academy is a series of online webinars for choral singers taught by professional choral singers.  
• Japanese American Citizens League – Seattle Chapter, $600.00 – The free Mixed Race Seattle Online was a transformative day of storytelling, art, and creative expression meant to grow community among multiracial teens, young adults, and their families.  
• Festa Italiana, $500.00 – Creating a Virtual Italian and concert in lieu of an in-person event to support community connection during the current public health crisis.  
• Monique Franklin, $1,000.00 – Mama’z Muezz is a one-woman play that explores the theme of African-American motherhood glimpsed from present day and historical vantage points of mother’s of African descent.  
• Adrienne La Faye (The Alasea Network), $700.00 – Portraits of Forgotten Women is a national five-state Portrait series of fifty-two African American women inmates to receive self-esteem, use of voice, ideas and portrait makeovers.  
• Emma Lawes, $1,000.00 – One on Ones is a mentorship + residency program that pairs Seattle movement artists with local luminaries, hosted and co-produced with Velocity Dance Center.  
• Anna Mlasowsky, $875.00 – Das Schaufenster Gallery is a window gallery space in Seattle that was born in response to the closures of institutions and cancellations of opportunities due to Covid19. Each month features a new solo exhibition from a selected artist, with a focus on underrepresented national and international artists.  
• Ylfa Muindi, $780.00 – Forested Niches is series of self-guided forest therapy audio guides for the city of Seattle featuring mindfulness exercises, stories of interconnectedness and interviews.  
• Alicia Mullikin, $1,000.00 – Community Open Forum provided a free open level company class with phrase-work from El Sueno, an evening length work that surrounds the experiences of first generation American women of color.  
• Northwest Asian Weekly, $850.00 – A project documenting the murals created in the Chinatown – International District neighborhoods during the BLM movement and to protect storefronts during the pandemic.  
• Northwest Evard Grieg Society, $950.00 – From Grieg to Gershwin: A Virtual Concert Mini-Series features three short concerts of Norwegian and American music, hiring and supporting musicians & recording engineers, in partnership with several other Seattle-based organizations  
• Nu Black Arts West Theatre, $1,000.00 – Presentations and community performances of original works that entertained and informed the public during the pandemic. 
• Emily Orrson, $900.00 – WISH_U_WERE_HERE is an Art Expo featuring art, installation and performance around the theme of refusal & technology in the old Seattle Curtain Building.  
• Positively Positive Productions LLC, $950.00 – Creative Works is a workshop of spoken word, poetry and hip-hop to educate the public on HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ, Asexual, Aromantic, and HIV+ identities.  
• Pratidhwani, $1,000.00 – A series of online workshops to help build practical Theatre-related skills, host community conversations about issues relevant to the community, and Virtual play readings.  
• Puckduction, $950.00 – It’s All For You:  A Janet Jackson Revue, a neo-burlesque tribute to the discography of Janet Jackson by POC artists at Century Ballroom 
• Represent Resonate Resource, $1,000.00 – “Capitol Hill Arts Community Connections” supports a new video+audio series “SPACE podcast” aka “Seattle Places for Arts & Community Engagement” interviewing Seattle community arts space makers who are creating arts places intentionally accessible to under-represented artists in Capitol Hill.  
• Alina Rios, $1,000.00 – Corona Hopelings, an online collection of literary and visual art submissions as a response to the coronavirus  
• Cynda Rochester, $1,000.00 – Youth, in partnership with HOSTED, created cards to raise the spirits of elders who were isolated in senior housing during the pandemic and created a video to share with the public.   
• Jonathan Salmon, $1,000.00 – The REZ is a film working with community members from the Tulalip Reservation with a virtual screening on Indigenous Peoples Day.  
• Seattle Art Cars, $800.00 – A number of Art cars led caravans to visit elder care facilities and bring joy to residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.  
• Seattle Dance Collective, $875.00 – Continuum:  Bridging the Distance, is a film project featuring a new concert dance and class series that aimbe to bring art to people at a time when live performance ahs been prohibited due to COVID-19 epidemic.  The project also offered choreographic and performance work opportunities to diverse and underserved artists at a time when their normal income sources have been placed in jeopardy.  
• Seattle Neighborhood Group, $925.00 – A local artist from the Rainier Valley Community will be painting over an existing mural on Genesee that has been recently tagged in the midst of COVID-19. The local businesses will vote on the artist and the funds will go to pay the artist to paint the mural, helping to uplift the community in times of COVID-19.  
• the Seattle Residency Project, $1,000.00 – A mini documentary about the studio practice and experience of participating artists during a 6-month residency.  
• Silver Kite Community Arts, $850.00 –The creation of arts activity toolkits to Lake City community members.  
• Shattered Glass Project, $850.00 – Director and Playwright Incubator Mentoring Program with a zoom production of a play entitled A Series of Small Cataclysms written by Carolynne Wilcox and Jen Smith Anderson and directed by Incubator/Mentor cohort member Sophe Friedman. 
• South Park Merchants Association, $900.00 – 1st Multicultural Gateway for South Park Business District is a public art installation and commemorative event that connected community with resources during the pandemic.  
• Megan Torgenson, $925.00 – Reframing Rural is a podcast cultivating curiosity and conversation across the urban rural divide.  
• University Heights Center (UHeights), $1,000.00 – The UHeights Sketchbook Project connects unhoused youth with a supportive community during this period of isolation while giving them an outlet for their creativity. Each participant tells their own story, their own way, in the pages of their sketchbook that is then preserved as part of a unique visual history in a virtual and physical library.  
• Velasco Arts, $1,000.00 – The Working Human Festival is a series of writing and theatre workshops for the working class, immigrant, 1st/2nd generation, and/or artists of color that culminates into a festival of new and original works.  
• Arami Walker, $950.00 – A Universe By Nature is a music and meditation album to support community during the public health crisis.  
• WASAT, $1000.00 – A series of online events supporting youth that focused on the history of Black Muslims and the role of artists and healers and community workers during the pandemic.