With a history of supporting the cultural life of communities across the region, Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Interchange program recognizes the role of individual artists as change agents and connectors in the cities and towns where they reside. With an innate understanding of process and experience as problem-solvers, artists possess the skills, training, and vision to collaborate across sectors, stimulate dialogue, activate neighborhoods, and creatively respond to civic challenges.
The Interchange Artist Grant program is designed to strengthen communities and individual artists within our region by supporting artist-led projects focused on social impact.
Interchange will support sixteen artists with an active socially-engaged creative practice in the Mid-America Arts Alliance region* through:
Recognizing that there is a broad array of definitions and distinctions in the field commonly referred to as social practice, Interchange uses the definition of social and civic practice as outlined by The Center for Performance and Civic Practice:
Artists working with the public on an artist-led vision that may include research, process, and/or content generation with an intention of social impact outside of traditional audience experience (social practice.)
Artists co-designing a project with the public with the spoken intention to serve a public, non-arts partner’s self-defined need (civic practice).
*Artists are required to reside in the M-AAA region (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas).