Giving Compass' Take:

• Alicia Ethni covers New York Foundations for the Arts and its Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program that fosters community and collaboration.

• What organizations are supporting arts and minorities in your community? How can funders help them expand their impact?

• Read 10 reasons to support the arts in 2019.

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), founded in 1971, empowers artists at critical stages of their creative lives. One of the ways NYFA serves our mission is through our Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (IAP) that has served more than 460 mentees since 2007. A large part of the success of this program is the fostering of communities and networks that enables participants and consultants to connect and collaborate to create more opportunities for artists to showcase their work and push their practice to new levels.

A clear example of this is a recent NYFA/New York Live Arts (NYLA) collaboration initiated by Yanira Castro—a Puerto Rican, Bessie Award-winning artist based in Brooklyn, who in 2009 formed the interdisciplinary group a canary torsi—and Martita Abril, a performer, choreographer, teaching artist, IAP mentee, and now mentor of the IAP Program. Originally from Tijuana, México, she has worked with numerous dance artists and companies throughout México, the U.S., and Ecuador including Dance Constructions by Simone Forti at the Museum of Modern Art.

This summer NYLA presented, in partnership with IAP, Wild, Wild Earth, a group exhibition co-curated by Yanira Castro, Martita Abril, and Dain DeltaDawn that included IAP alumni. A group showcase, In | Between, followed, where alumni of the IAP gathered to share ideas on NYLA stage. With the goal of reflecting on the multiplicity of their experiences, identities, practices, and politics, these artists also speak to what holds them in common: the experience of displacement and disorientation, and the work of communicating/finding/forming community.

Read the full article about supporting immigrant artists and building a network of support by Alicia Ehni at Americans for the Arts.