MANCC Receives Renewed Funding from Sustainable Arts Foundation
Since 2004, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) has brought nationally significant choreographers and their collaborators to the FSU campus to create new works that often premiere in prominent venues across the country. MANCC, renowned for its full support of artists, typically provides travel, hotel, artist fees, space, and staff assistance. In 2018 MANCC added support for parent artists through a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation (SAF) and is now pleased to announce renewed support from SAF for 2020-2021.
Recent artists who have been supported by SAF funding for themselves or their collaborators include Milka Djordjevich (CA), Marjani Forté-Saunders (CA/NY), Beth Gill (NY), Donna Uchizono (NY), and both DaEun Jung (CA) and Jacob Slominski (NY) as part of MANCC Forward Dialogues. SAF funding is flexible and ranges from covering childcare for parent artists who choose to bring their children to Tallahassee, to supporting at home care costs. Not only does this support ease financial stress on the parent, but it also allows lead artists to select parent-artist collaborators who might not otherwise be able to leave their child for the duration of the residency.
In the 2018-19 season, five MANCC artists received SAF funds to support either their own childcare or that of their collaborators, and in 2020 MANCC was able to provide Beth Gill with funding to support the care of her newborn son. Gill’s husband came into residence to care for the child, thanks to SAF funds.
“Being a new mom of four months at the time of the residency required balancing my time in the studio with childcare and breastfeeding needs. My artist husband took care of our son while I had blocks of embodied research time in the studio with collaborators. On a couple days he joined me in the studio with our son to experiment with integration of real life into artistic practice.”–Beth Gill
Photo by Chris Cameron
This funding has become an important example of how MANCC continuously seeks ways to be responsive to artists’ evolving needs. Here, MANCC supports parent artists, allowing these artists to choose residency timelines and collaborators based on a project’s needs, as opposed to feeling hindered by the realities that come with being or working with parent artists.
MANCC is excited to be named alongside 14 other multi-discipline residency programs across the country who also have received this grant for 2021. To learn more, visit https://www.sustainableartsfoundation.org/residencygrantees/.