(LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ) -- The Trenton Arts Fund at the Princeton Area Community Foundation has awarded a total of $25,000 in grants to eight nonprofits working to make the arts more accessible to the community.
The Trenton Arts Fund was created in 2018 by John Hatch and his husband, David Henderson, to support arts, culture and history organizations because they believe that when the arts thrive, cities thrive. A seven-person grants committee, whose members live locally and have a background in the arts, reviewed and evaluated all applications and recommended funding eight finalists.
“Our goal was to support emerging and established arts, culture and history organizations in Trenton as they reopen and emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Hatch. “We also wanted to support and recognize those organizations that focus on our young people in the city. The Trenton Arts Fund received many excellent applications, and we are thrilled to support these eight organizations that are doing extraordinary work in Trenton, bringing the arts to all corners of the city.”
This is the second and largest round of grants made by the Fund. Grants were awarded to:
* Artworks Trenton to help rebuild youth and teen art education programming for the benefit of Trenton’s diverse communities
* Passage Theatre Company in Trenton to support the in-school residency and subsequent production of “Junior High #2: The Hedgepeth-Williams Story”
* St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Trenton for artistic and mentoring personnel to develop and produce “The Sermon, a Pray on Words from 1770,” a live public presentation drawn from an original manuscript from 1770
* Trenton Children's Chorus for its satellite program: Choral Music at International Charter School of Trenton
* Trenton Circus Squad for its service-learning program
* Trenton Museum Society for the Trenton Forward: Youth and Arts Together program
* Trenton Music Makers for its Open Strings: Amplifying Youth Voice and Storytelling through Collective Composition program
A separate award was made to the James R Halsey Foundation of the Arts, which is headquartered in Hamilton, but works primarily with Trenton students. The nonprofit, which teaches young people the art of filmmaking, while providing life-skills training, received an operating support grant.
To learn more about the fund, visit the Trenton Arts Fund page on the Community Foundation’s website.
The Princeton Area Community Foundation promotes lasting philanthropy and builds community across Mercer County and central New Jersey. As a community convener, philanthropic resource, and manager of charitable funds, it helps people and companies make effective charitable gifts and awards grants to nonprofits. Since its founding in 1991, the Community Foundation has made grants of more than $154 million and provided an additional $21 million in support to our nonprofit fundholders. With over 400 charitable funds, in 2020, the Community Foundation awarded $19 million in grants to support the critical work of nonprofits in making the communities they serve more responsive to the needs of their residents. It has been named by Charity Navigator as One of America’s 10 Best Community Foundations.
PHOTO: David Henderson and John Hatch
