Rocket Grants Program
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.
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 fourth year, the Rocket Grants program has awarded $163,000 in direct funds to forty projects, involving at least one hundred and 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. To learn more about this program and the projects supported by Rocket Grants please explore this site.
The Andy Warhol Foundation has invested in the creation of a growing national network of regional re-granting programs – supporting Alternative Exposure in San Francisco, California; The Idea Fund in Houston, Texas; and The Propeller Fund in Chicago, Illinois in addition to the Rocket Grants program. The Foundation aims to support the independent creative activity of artists by partnering with leading artist-centered, visual arts organizations across the country.
