The CANVAS Compendium: Dispatches from the New Jewish Renaissance
The New Year is a time for new beginnings, and we’re delighted to announce a new round of Jewish arts and culture grantmaking—more than $200,000 awarded in funding to eight impactful organizations, each a new addition to the CANVAS grantee community. These awards will support three new Emerging Network grantees as well as five grants in our newest funding category at CANVAS, Distribution grants for Jewish arts and culture.
We are especially excited by how the CANVAS footprint expands with these grants. We’re funding new disciplines like film and publishing and reaching new regions in the U.S. and Canada, from Boston, MA and Montreal, QC to Portland, OR and Asheville, NC. Our first foray into Distribution grants is designed to activate channels including film and music festivals, live performances, an artist-run press and production studio, online platforms, museum exhibitions, public art installations, and more to engage and inspire audiences through meaningful connections with contemporary Jewish creativity. Meanwhile we’re continuing our investments in media coverage of the field, so that Jewish creativity can be seen by an increasingly broad and diverse audience. (See examples of past coverage here.)
The start of a new year is also an opportunity for a brief reminder of the philanthropic approach we take at CANVAS: to discuss why supporting distribution channels and networks are key to elevating Jewish arts and culture.
Distribution, simply put, refers to the myriad ways that audiences come into contact with the work of contemporary Jewish artists—through organizations, platforms, stages, screens, museums, public spaces, and more. To date, CANVAS has supported Jewish arts and culture networks that provide community development of artists, as well as media outlets that elevate and expand the volume of coverage about Jewish creativity. We see the distribution of that work—specifically, how this creative content engages and inspires audiences, fosters diverse representations of Jewish life and experience, challenges stereotypes and changes narratives, and provides opportunities for cross-cultural connection and understanding—as a third essential component of a thriving Jewish arts sector.
You may already be familiar with the Network Grants category at CANVAS, which provide a wealth of resources for artists to create their work. Networks strengthen the connection of Jewish creators to the field; introduce artists to new opportunities; help promote their work; and provide a community based on creativity of the highest quality and identity, fostering platforms upon which artists can build a lasting Jewish kinship and a career. CANVAS’s 16 network grantees represent literally thousands of creative leaders and practitioners whose work is inspired by or explores Jewish religion, history, tradition, ritual, or culture.
We see this growing “network of networks” across our Media, Distribution, and Network grantees as the foundation of a healthy Jewish arts ecosystem. As we expand our grantmaking across the field, we are also offering increased support to grantees in 2024 through in-person gatherings, mentorship programs, community-building sessions, and more. While CANVAS is helping to move the needle, this remains an underserved community that is nonetheless resourceful and nimble in driving the 21st-century Jewish cultural renaissance. We hope other funders take note, and lovers of the arts take heart; as these connections are drawn more tightly, we anticipate a more consistent and more compelling outpouring of Jewish creativity.
During such a challenging time for Jewish and many other communities across the globe, we are heartened by the work of these organizations to elevate inspiring artists and art forms, to foster connection and shared understanding, and to illustrate the vitality, diversity, and complexity of Jewish experience. Their work feels more important now than ever.
We invite you to meet our new grantees, follow their work, and support them if you can.
Sarah Burford
CANVAS COO
Distribution Grants
The Ashkenaz Foundation celebrates global Jewish music, arts, and culture that embraces the past, present and future. While rooted in the spirit and forms of the Yiddish culture revival, Ashkenaz spotlights a broad range of multi-ethnic Jewish identities and artistic/cultural traditions, providing a platform for artists established and emerging.
Through its biennial Ashkenaz Festival—one of the largest and most prestigious showcases of Jewish music and culture anywhere in the world—and a robust slate of year-round programs across the Greater Toronto Area, Ashkenaz seeks to reach the largest possible audiences, both creating and meeting a demand for high-quality Jewish arts and culture, and providing its core Jewish audience with a source of pride, inspiration and community cohesion.
Ayin Press is a Brooklyn-based independent publishing house and production studio rooted in Jewish culture and emanating outward. Ayin was founded on a deep belief in the power of culture and creativity to heal, transform, and uplift the world we share and build together.
Both online and in print, Ayin celebrates artists and thinkers at the margins and explores the growing edges of collective consciousness through a diverse range of mediums and genres, including nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art books, children’s books, interviews, translations, multimedia projects, conceptual projects, digital art, immersive events, and online programming.
Jewish Arts Collaborative, or JArts, is a Boston-based organization that curates, celebrates, and builds community around the diverse world of Jewish arts, culture, and creative expression. Through art, food, literature, and music, JArts celebrates the richness and diversity of Jewish experiences, helping to build a more vibrant and tolerant future for Jewish communities and beyond. Its groundbreaking Kolture website curates and celebrates Jewish culture, providing a place where lovers of Jewish art, music, literature, and other forms can embrace Jewish experiences.
The Jewish Film Institute (JFI) is the premier curatorial voice for Jewish film and media around the world. Founded in 1980 as the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), JFI’s programs illuminate the full diversity of Jewish experiences, championing bold films and filmmakers that expand and evolve the Jewish story for audiences everywhere. We envision a more informed and empathetic world where vital Jewish-content films are made, watched, shared, and treasured.
The Braid is the go-to Jewish story company and the leading non-profit organization creating, curating, producing and preserving stories grounded in Jewish culture and experience. Based in Santa Monica, California, the Braid develops, produces, distributes and preserves diverse contemporary Jewish stories that engage and educate individuals, inspire community, and build cultural legacy. Its pioneering new art form, Salon Theatre, a hybrid of storytelling and theatre, spotlights and mainstreams voices and experiences too often overlooked in both the Jewish community and secular world.
Emerging Networks
The mission of Co/Lab is to help foster the next iteration of Jewish life in Portland, Oregon, hosting programs that examine issues of personal meaning and social change through a Jewish lens. The “Co” part is important: it’s a reflection of their commitment to bring people together to dream, experiment, and collaborate in order to create events of the greatest interest and relevance to the community.
Co/Lab takes an inclusive and non-judgmental approach to Judaism. The organization wants to open the door wide to all those who seek to explore Jewish identity and ideas in new and innovative ways. And above all, Co/Lab trusts in curiosity, collaboration, and experimentation to lead us to new connections and vistas.
The Museum of Jewish Montreal is redefining what it means to engage in Jewish life. In addition to hosting art exhibitions and leading hundreds of walking tours and food tours annually, the museum hosts dozens of cultural events throughout the year based around art, food, music, and history. The museum also runs annual research, food, and oral history fellowships for university students and microgrants for creative and cultural exploration. Through these diverse initiatives, the museum provides new opportunities and experiences for visitors of all backgrounds to explore and engage with art, culture, history, and community.
Yetzirah is dedicated to fostering and supporting a community space for Jewish poets and nourishing writers and readers of Jewish poetry now and for generations to come. Founded in Asheville, North Carolina, Yetzirah is the only national organization devoted to the support of Jewish poets and Jewish poetry, Yetzirah supports poets at every stage of their career through workshops, publishing resources, regional and online readings, writing community creation, and recognition and visibility to event organizers, teachers, and scholars through its Discover Jewish Poets database. Its events are welcoming to audience members of all traditions, raising awareness of Jewish poetry in communities beyond our own.
See our previous CANVAS Compendium: Art vs. Hate: Arts and Culture Initiatives Promoting Healing and Renewal
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