Flushing Town Hall 2022 Arts Grants for Queens

This program is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, Statewide Community Regrants Program (formerly the Decentralization program) with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Community Arts Grant Recipients (for Organizations)

Art House Astoria presents Broadway Careers Concert Series, a free concert and lecture series for kids led by Broadway artists, performers, composers, lighting designers, stage managers highlighting opportunities in the arts. The series will be presented at Art House Astoria (or another local partnering space) in Fall 2022. For more info, visit: https://www.arthouseastoria.org Art Transforms, Inc. presents When Criminal Justice is Criminal "Injustice",  a criminal justice art exhibit featuring two artists currently on death row, one formerly incarcerated artist, the wife of a death row prisoner, and several local artists. The goal is to raise awareness about the criminal "Injustice" system, with a special Q&A with the artist on death row on June 25, 2022. For more info, visit: https://arttransforms.org Astoria Film Festival Inc. will offer filmmaking workshops to students (grades 3-12) who will produce, write, direct, film, and edit short films generated by ideas during workshops with instructor scaffolding. These workshop films will screen at the Astoria Youth Film Festival, in-person and online, followed by a filmmakers' panel. College film students will mentor under-represented youth, and support them to pursue media/film careers with a special focus on supporting under-represented creators (Women, Disabled, BBIA, First-Gen, Immigrant, Low Income, LGBTQ+). For more info, visit: https://www.astoriafilmfestival.org

Art Transforms, Inc.

CPC NanShan Senior Center

Culture Lab LIC will offer the Emergence Residency Program, an artist residency program that offers artists and companies free rehearsal and performance space to develop and produce new work. This program will provide space to 10 artists/companies across all disciplines, offer an opportunity to connect with a mentor in their chosen medium, and a platform to showcase their work in progress on Culture Lab's website and social media. Live performances of all genres (theatre, music, dance, performance art, puppetry, etc) created at Culture Lab will be showcased at Culture Lab's outdoor stage or indoor theatre in the spring. For more info, visit: https://www.culturelablic.org CPC NanShan Senior Center will offer Chinese calligraphy, paper cutting and craft workshops to celebrate the lunar year of the tiger at Queens NanShan Senior Center. Artist Ming Liang Lu will introduce the history and evolution of Chinese calligraphy to participants who will learn basic techniques of calligraphy structure and layout. Master Lu will also demonstrate paper-cutting, an ancient Chinese art form dating from the Han Dynasty in a hands-on workshop. Sharlene Chou will lead mixed media craft making workshops with lunar year themes. Participants will use mixed media to create artwork for the final presentation and exhibit, open to the public. For more info, visit: https://www.cpc-nyc.org/programs/family-support/nan-shan-senior-center

Diverse Streets Initiative (fiscally sponsored by The Connected Chef) will present Diverse Streets Initiative Performance Series - Resilience. Public shows in Astoria and Jackson Heights will focus on themes related to resilience - public health and nonviolence - showcasing the talents of DSI’s collective alongside local neighborhood artists. The public health show will focus on topics pronounced by COVID-19 and mental health and autoimmune diseases like AIDS; the nonviolence show will focus on safety measures particularly for LGBTQIA+ and black folks in honor of pride and Juneteenth. Performers and visual artists will perform and exhibit work related to these themes, with an opportunity to give thanks to healthcare workers and activists. For more info, visit: https://www.diversestreetsinitiative.org Eclipses Group Theater New York Corp. will present Raving Reason, a new play inspired by Euripides’ The Bacchae, where the god Dionysus' instincts and senses clash disastrously with rationality. Euripides’ tragedy touches on a contemporary concern: how does our technology-enabled way of life affect our nature as human beings? What happens when there is disharmony between the rational and the natural? The cast will feature two female characters, three principal characters, and a chorus with on-stage video projections. For more info, visit: https://egtny.com

Diverse Streets Initiative

Eclipses Group Theatre New York Corp.

En Construcción Reading Series (fiscally sponsored by The Jackson Heights Beautification Group) presents New Works by Latin American Writers, a series of reading sessions and online workshops featuring Latin American writers presenting unfinished and unpublished work, and sharing their creative process. Writers will lead discussions of a particular genre, design and present creative writing activities for attendees, review texts written by participants, and share personal experiences on writing. Readings and workshops are hosted in-person at Centro Cultural Barco de Papel in Jackson Heights, free and open to the public, primarily in Spanish. For more info, visit: https://enconstruccionnyc.com

Flamenco Latino, Inc. presents The 2022 Mas Alla Series, a performance series at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning and PS 212Q with live-streamed performances. The program features group choreographies interpreted by cofounder Aurora with her dancers and students at Kerri Edge’s Edge School of the Arts. The collaborations will feature African American dance, jazz, African dance, hip hop, and flamenco skills with live accompaniment, and explore improvisation embodied by tap dancer Omar Edwards' style. A family show presented at PS 212Q will draw from both repertoires. Livestreamed performances will run between summer and fall, offering audiences a glimpse into the process of shaping repertoire. For more info, visit: https://www.flamencolatino.com

Friends of Gantry Plaza State Park (dba Hunters Point Parks Conservancy (HPPC)) presents The Blue Bus Project - Leave No Trace Workshops. HPPC will partner with The Blue Bus Project to run a series of workshops and discussions that will allow participants to create artwork from discarded waste found in parks and surrounding waters, and heighten awareness of environmental change through visual art, performance and interdisciplinary art. Discussions will include topics on climate change, environmental impact of litter and pollution, and how to recycle, reuse, repurpose, and refuse single plastic items. Participants will work inside and outside of the bus to create art out of discarded materials, and create a collaborative art banner based on the themes of each workshop. For more info, visit: https://www.hunterspointparks.org

Illegal: A New Musical (fiscally sponsored by Chinese Community Center of Flushing) presents Illegal: A New Musical - In Concert which tells the untold stories of Asian immigrants and their journey to becoming American through a concert version of the "Illegal" musical. With community partners including Chinese Community Center of Flushing and the Queens Public Library at Flushing, this concert will introduce "Illegal" to new audiences towards a full production of the show in late 2022. For more info, visit: https://skylerchin.com/illegal-a-new-musical

Jackson Heights Beautification Group presents Summer Sundays in the Park, a performance series coordinated by a committee of the Jackson Heights Beautification Group. This free concert series features musical groups that reflect the incredible range of ethnicity and musical styles prevalent in Jackson Heights. Featured bands include Indian musicians BIM and Navatman, jazz group Sonica, and the Jackson Heights Orchestra, among others. Planned collaborations with the Queensboro Dance Festival in 2022 will enhance engagement with multiple ethnic communities in Jackson Heights. For more info, visit: https://www.jhbg.org

JH Art Talks

JH Art Talks (fiscally sponsored by Jackson Heights Beautification Group) presents JH Art Talks 2022 Season, six in-person artist talks with projected slideshows at Espresso 77 café and livestreamed on Facebook. Each evening will feature two artists: a veteran of JHAT who will present a brief update on their work, paired with another artist who will give a presentation of their work followed by a Q&A. Queens-based artists will be selected by a committee consisting of previous participants. A diversity of background, approach and media will be considered, with POC and immigrant artists given priority. For more info, visit: https://jharttalks.com LaMicro Theater presents Escena Sur: Short Stories and Plays 2022, a series of four cinematic readings of short stories by Latin American writers from Latin America and the U.S., narrated by professional actors. These readings will be recorded in a professional recording studio, monitored by directors and technical personnel. Audiences will have access to these stories by visiting LaMicro Theater’s website. LaMicro Theater will also present an in-person public stage reading of El Nogalar by Mexican American Tania Saracho. For more info, visit: https://www.lamicrotheater.org

Long Island City Artists presents LICA 2022 Members Group Exhibition, a group exhibition in May 2022 at Culture Lab LIC that will showcase the work of Queens artists across a variety of disciplines. The exhibition will include panel discussions, performance events, and other time-based elements. The theme of the exhibition is isolation, reconnection and transformation. The exhibition encourages artists to showcase new directions and thoughts that their work has taken since COVID, juxtaposing the forced privacy of recent times with the opportunity to start anew with a community that is at once familiar and different than before. For more info, visit: https://www.licartists.org Mare Nostrum Elements presents the ninth edition of Emerging Choreographer Series (ECS), a performance series of six new works by choreographers and one ECS alumni. The program provides 50 hours of studio time to selected choreographers, offers access to dance-community mentors to shape the works, debuts of new works at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC), and provides guidance on post-performance choreographic opportunities. The culminating event presents these seven new works on two consecutive evenings on April 26-27 before a live audience at LPAC in Long Island City. For more info, visit: https://www.mnelements.org

Long Island City Artists

Mare Nostrum Elements

Multicultural Sonic Evolution presents Japanese Children Stories with Live Music & Shadow Dance (working title), a program introducing Japanese childrens’ stories through music, dance, and theatre. Featured works include a world premiere of Julia Bengtsson's shadow dance choreography to "Yamanashi '' music by composer Yui Kitamura, Japanese taiko drumming by Fumi Tanakadate and percussion music pieces written by local Japanese composers. A narrator/actor will read the translated stories in English with dance performances accompanied by live percussionists and a taiko drummer. For more info, visit: https://www.musefriends.org New York Kathak Festival presents NYKF Fall Concert (working title), a concert that features local kathak dancers and musicians showcasing distinctive elements of kathak dance — powerful storytelling told through gesture, expression, body language, and the creation of "rasa" or mood. NYKF will partner with a local dance company, a solo dancer, and accompanying musicians in performance. Through this concert, NYKF seeks to honor the kathak tradition, while providing artists with the room to interpret traditional stories in the new contexts they live and work in. For more info, visit: https://kathakfestival.org

New York Mandarin Playback Inc. presents Playback Performance, where audiences are invited to share their personal stories to actors and musicians who present these stories and “Play-IT-back” to the storyteller and the audience. Playback Theatre draws on psychology as ensemble members must actively listen and properly project the emotions to protect storytellers from retraumatization. Performances will be presented in Mandarin to explore how the community is connecting and supporting each other in the midst of the pandemic – the joy, grief and frustration of these times. For more info, visit: https://nymplayback.org Project Attica: Community Through the Arts, Inc. presents We ART Strength, an artivism project that will bring murals and artivist workshops to several neighborhoods of Queens to amplify the cultural identity and spirit of the community. The mural-making process will be collaborative and inclusive of the voices and issues that resonate with residents. Art and activism workshops will be held in partnership with grassroots groups working on public health approaches to violence and with muralist Cesar Figueroa. For more info, visit: http://www.projectattica.org

Project Attica: Community Through the Arts

Queens World Film Festival

Queens Center Of The Arts / Queens Underground Film Festival presents Film Festival Movie Nights, screening events featuring Queens filmmakers, web series producers, performers and documentarians, with presentations of short films, music, dance, poetry videos and web series from various cultures that reflect the extensive diversity of Queens. For more info, visit: https://www.queensunderground718.com Queens Jazz OverGround 2022 presents 2022 Spring Jazz Fest, which will include middle and high school jazz band clinics and performances, a student jam session, master classes, a performance featuring the winners of our student jazz video competition, and performances by professional Queens-based jazz ensembles. The event will be free of charge to enrich the Queens community through jazz education and performance. For more info, visit: https://queensjazz.org

Queens World Film Initiative, Inc. presents the 12th Annual Queens World Film Festival (November 15 - 20, 2022), which returns to the Museum of the Moving Image, Queens Theatre, The Local and other local venues, celebrating themes of resiliency, hope and endurance. Pre-festival events will be live-streamed, film screenings will be followed by Q&A’s with filmmakers, and the entire festival will be available to stream on FilmFestivalFlix.com once the festival concludes. For more info, visit: https://queensworldfilmfestival.org

Rockaway Film Festival presents the fifth edition of Rockaway Film Festival 2022, a seven-day cinematic celebration including 12-18 programs of feature films and shorts. New releases will be premiered alongside forgotten masterpieces, centering films meaningful to Rockaway residents. Each screening will be interactive and intimate, with filmmaker Q&A’s, live music, and performances throughout the week. Free tickets will be provided for local community organizations. For more info, visit: https://rockawayfilmfestival.com

Salt Tree Charitable Trust presents the third annual Eco-Puppetry Festival, a puppetry variety show highlighting sustainably constructed puppets and ecology-focused puppetry performances. The festival will take place as a single-stage public in-person showcase with a 90-minute runtime (featuring between 8 to 10 short performances from a range of puppetry styles). For more info, visit: https://salttree.art

STAR Senior Theater Acting Repertory presents Bringing Live Theater and Songs to Queens. A traveling repertory company of seniors, this project includes a director, assistant director, musical director, and volunteer actors and singers performing short scenes at each performance with accompanying songs. The repertoire consists of scenes from plays and song selections, including Broadway standards, spirituals, holiday themed and patriotic songs. New scenes are introduced twice a year, with new plays written by our members and local playwrights. For more info, visit: https://www.star-queens.org

Sunnyside District Management Association, Inc. presents Open (Air) Studio Sunnyside, a public weekend showcase of multidisciplinary work from Western Queens-based artists and creative groups, primarily at Bliss Plaza in Sunnyside. This event will combine elements of an open studio or open rehearsals event with interactive engagements including artist talks, readings, and community art activations. For more info, visit: https://www.sunnysideshines.org

Taiwanese American Arts Council presents Urban Tribes: Urban Reverence, an exhibition of contemporary video, installation, performance art, sculpture, photography, and painting. These works will address cultural diversity in today’s urbanized areas and the belief systems that enable it, with concomitant examinations of the environment and the role it plays in locating identity. Seminars and events with artists, curators, historians, and art critics will be included. For more info, visit: http://www.taac-us.org

The Dream Unfinished presents VITALS, an outdoor festival featuring live music and NYC-based organizations to promote health and wellness amongst communities of color. For more info, visit: https://thedreamunfinished.org

The Glow Foundation, Inc. presents Lunar New Year Chinese Chorus Performances with the New York Chinese Chorus. Five Lunar New Year-themed opera repertoire pieces led by three conductors and pianists will be presented with a group of vocalists to ring in the Lunar New Year. For more info, visit: https://glownyc.org/nycc

The Guardians of Flushing Bay, Inc. presents The People's Boat: A Participatory Painting Series. GoFB will hire artist sTo Len to design and co-organize a series of community painting days for a donated 17-foot whaler boat that GoFB and The Beast, a dragon boat team, will begin sharing in Spring 2022. GoFB will use the boat to collect water quality data and host regular educational tours for local residents and advocates, highlighting the waterway’s oyster gardens, restored wetlands and stormwater infrastructure. GoFB and Len will host a series of community painting days to redesign the exterior of the boat, with a brief presentation of GoFB stewardship efforts and Len’s printmaking. Project participants will be encouraged to co-create the finalized print through a participatory process. For more info, visit: https://www.facebook.com/GuardiansofFlushingBay

Vivarta Arts Inc. presents Garba Around the Globe, a public dance event celebrating the Indian festival of Navratri, a nine day festival in praise of Goddess Durga and the divine feminine powers. Folk inspired dances including garba and dandiya will be presented, with lessons for the public to dance along during the main event when the space opens up for an evening of community dance and music for all to participate in. Pre-event workshops will offer lessons on more complicated steps. For more info, visit: https://www.vivartaarts.com Women in Comics Collective International Inc. presents WinC x King Manor, an outdoor comic book festival at the King Manor museum in Jamaica, Queens. Local comic book artists and writers will sell their work, with author readings from local comic book creators, a portfolio review by a local artist, an art workshop, a writing workshop and live model drawing with local cosplayers as the models. For more info, visit: https://www.womenincomicscollective.org

Vivarta Arts, Inc.

Artists in Queens Grant Recipients (for Individual Artists)

David Mills will produce UpSouth Under Queens' Grounds, a chapbook of inventive-historical poems about formerly enslaved African-Americans buried in Kew Gardens’ Maple Grove and Maspeth’s Mount Olive Cemeteries. The project will involve research, interviews, creating writing exercises for writing workshops and creating an anthology of the workshop participants’ writings about the history of formerly enslaved Queens residents and present-day connections to these residents. The project will culminate in a two-hour reading from the workshop participants’ anthology and the chapbook. Ifeatuanya Chiejina will produce Black Men Guided: Approached, a series of ten new artworks (paintings and drawings on mixed media or watercolor paper) depicting heterosexual black men, accompanied by written statements that provide an insight on the hardships and societal expectations placed on heterosexual black men. The project includes focus groups, an exhibition, and an artist talk in Southeast Queens. For more info, visit: http://www.ify-chiejina.com Kerri Edge will produce QUEENS GET DOWN In Tha Streetz, an outdoor pop up art habitat presented at an open street festival in Jamaica that examines this community in the 1960’s through the presentation of three new dance works created in the spirit of Bernice Johnson. The festival will include music performance, interactive activities, decor, cuisine, and "old fashioned" theater protocol, with a crew of professional dancers and musicians, stage and production management, highlighting female identifying individuals in the cultural arts. For more info, visit: https://www.kerriedge.com

Ifeatuanya Chiejina

Lu Zhang

Flushing Mall Chronicles (Herb Tam and Lu Zhang) will create ​​Homeostasis, a social practice poetic exploration of the micro malls and subdivided dwellings that characterize a hidden part of Flushing’s Chinese community constantly undergoing change. The artists will visit spaces advertised on a public bulletin board at Rong Xin Plaza listing low-cost rooms for rent, record conversations and document the dwellings along the way. With this material, they will create paintings, poetry and contextual historical research that will be presented on the public bulletin board at Rong Xin Plaza. The resulting exhibition will be a meditation on the interior lives of immigrants voiced through a poetics of displacement, migration, and longing for home. For more info, visit: https://www.luzhang.org Magaly Colimon-Christopher will create Aftershocks: A Tetralogy of Our Times, a multimedia film about the effects of the pandemic on the Caribbean American community, co-written by Magaly Colimon-Christopher and Juan Ramirez, Jr. Screenings will be followed by writing exercises with audiences and community testimonials related to the impact of the pandemic. A new play based on these audience experiences and contributions will be presented in a staged reading at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. For more info, visit: https://magalycolimon.com

Magdalena Kaczmarska will create Stories in the Moment, a co-creative dance, movement and storytelling program created in partnership with people living with dementia in neighborhoods around the Forest Hills Queens Community House. Each session centers a theme that is relevant to the group, explored through shared movement activities, and culminating in dance performances that build trust, create safe spaces for exploration and creativity, and amplify the creative voices of people living with dementia. For more info, visit: https://magdakaczmarska.com Midori Larsen will create Crossing the Seas, a series of chamber music compositions for Japanese taiko drums, woodwinds, piano, guitar and bass with elements of Japanese traditional music, classical music, and jazz. With an emphasis on self-discovery and life-purpose, the project highlights the journeys of the artist's late grandmother and herself, leaving hometowns as young women and starting new lives in far metropolises. For more info, visit: https://midorilarsen.com

Wing Han Kong

Zazel-Chavah O'Garra

Regine Sawyer will produce the Queens Fiber Arts Festival, featuring the works of local yarn dyers, spinners, fiber artists, knitters, and crocheters at King Manor Museum on Oct 22, 2022. Activities include crochet and knitting demonstrations, pattern workshops, a crafting circle, with a selection of local vendors. For more info, visit: https://www.stitchesandyarn.com Wing Han Kong will create Sustainability Programs & Community Art Mural Making Event, a collaborative public mural composed of reusable and recyclable waste items created by community members in a public park in Northeast Queens, through a series of activities, games and discussions about nature and the environment.  Zazel-Chavah O'Garra will create Episodes of The Soul - Part II, a dance performance that will engage Afro-Caribbeans in Southeast Queens with various abilities (wheel-chair bound, assistive tools), allowing participants to explore their Caribbean identity and collective experiences on isolation, mental health, disability, and social distancing, through a contemporary dance lens. For more info, visit: https://www.zcodanceproject.com