Charlotte Street Foundation Rocket Grant recipient interviews

2010-13 ROCKET GRANT PROJECTS

The Rocket Grants program was launched in 2009 by the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO and the KU Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, KS, in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The program aims to fuel the energy of the Kansas City regional visual arts community by encouraging and supporting innovative, public-oriented work in non-traditional spaces. Get details: rocketgrants.org/

Rocket Grants enable individuals and groups of artists to take new risks with their work, push the scope and scale of their activities, develop and pursue collaborative projects, and engage with the public and public realm in inventive and meaningful ways. With the specific goals of developing new kinds of audiences and providing frameworks for the growth of further experimentation, awarded projects create unconventional and expansive forms of interaction, exchange, provocation, and surprise.

Now in its third year, the Rocket Grants program has awarded $121,000 in direct funds to thirty projects, involving at least seventy-two artists working in multiple media. Hundreds of other artists have been integrally and peripherally included in the performances, publications, workshops, artist-run spaces, videos, public installations, events and websites that the awards have funded.