Why Jewish Arts + Culture? Why Now?
When we talk about a 21st century Jewish cultural renaissance, we are referring to a groundswell of creativity that is approaching the 25-year mark. It is neither a passing fad, nor a phenomenon apart from the larger Jewish experience.
The renaissance is the expression of the Jewish experience, in all its richness, diversity, and complexity.
The number of professional artists and creatives exploring Jewish themes in their work is in the thousands. The first 26 CANVAS Grantees alone represent more than 3,000 of them. Since 2022, the CANVAS team has identified nearly 100 North American organizations and dozens of festivals dedicated to a wide spectrum of contemporary Jewish creativity.
But the central problem remains: In 2022, a sampling of close to 4,500 Jewish donor-advised-funds (DAFs) granting nearly $600 million found participants gave significantly less than 1% of their funding to the “Culture – Jewish” (the smallest of all recorded categories) yet gave 4% to secular arts (almost double what they gave to environmental causes).
Arts are a priority for the community, but somehow not so when defined as Jewish.
CANVAS’s annual grantmaking schedule regularly funds three intersecting areas of the Jewish arts ecosystem: Networks, Distribution, and Media.
In addition to funding the field, we nurture a community of practice among leaders in the field by providing ongoing professional development and capacity-building workshops, tools, in-person and virtual meeting opportunities for leaders and their teams, fieldwide conversations on rich, relevant topics, and access to one-on-one mentorship.
Over the next five years, CANVAS will invest up to $20 million in the 21st century Jewish cultural renaissance. We intend to double our grantmaking capacity by 2029; grow and strengthen our communities of practice of arts leaders and philanthropists; and cement our role as the lead champion for Jewish arts and culture.
Research
Our work is grounded in years of research about the state of the Jewish arts and culture field, including two commissioned reports conducted over the past decade about the Jewish cultural renaissance:
The first, Devising Strategies to Support Jewish Arts & Culture, identified the significant enthusiasm, and significant barriers to entry, for Jewish funders considering a philanthropic investment in the arts space.
The second, Cross Section: A Look at Jewish Arts and Culture in North America Today Through the Lens of Artists and Arts Organizations, was based on in-depth interviews with a broad range of artists, presenters, arts nonprofit leaders, and funders — and found that the field is in serious need of three things:
- More targeted and smarter support for Jewish artists and arts organizations.
- More robust distribution networks for high quality products and programs, to allow more individuals and organizations to access arts and culture as a way to connect to Judaism.
- More engaged and coordinated funders who want to ensure that their funding is strategic and well leveraged.
This presents a vast but time-sensitive opportunity for the Jewish community. If funders work together, strategically utilizing recent research on the field, the impact of our efforts could be transformative—both for the landscape of Jewish arts and culture and for other issue areas Jewish funders care deeply about, including education, identity, cross-cultural understanding, battling antisemitism, and strengthening community.
