Jacob’s Pillow Dance Receives Major Grant for “Virtual Pillow”
October 30, 2008
The Doris Duke Studio Theatre and picnicking area at Jacob’s Pillow. Photo by Ben Rudick.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance has been chosen to take part in a new technology project, Leading for the Future: Innovative Support for Artistic Excellence, a groundbreaking $15.125 million arts initiative created by the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Jacob’s Pillow, America’s longest running dance festival and a National Historic Landmark located in Becket, Mass., is one of ten arts organizations from across the nation invited to participate. The other finalists were Center Theatre Group, Alvin Ailey Dance Foundations, Cunningham Dance Foundation, Misnomer Dance Theater, National Black Arts Festival, Ping Chong & Company, SITI Company, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and The Wooster Group.
“This initiative will help us employ state of the art electronic media to extend every mission area of Jacob’s Pillow—creation, presentation, education, preservation and audience engagement—to benefit the arts community and the public,” said Ella Baff, Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow. “This funding will remove the constraints of conventional time and physical location, allowing us to share our institutional resources such as the vast archives, annual festival and Audience Engagement Program with a broader, worldwide audience.”
The Jacob’s Pillow initiative, presently called “Virtual Pillow,” will aim to deepen engagement with existing dance patrons; build audiences for dance; and increase the visibility of past, present and future artists presented by the festival. The Pillow’s archives contain thousands of films and videos from 1894 to the present, 27 trunks of costumes, and 45,000 historic dance photos. With this initiative, the Pillow hopes to add video of performances, talks and other events to the archives. It will also look for ways to share these resources with a wider audience, possibly through performances that are either live-streamed or delayed in their broadcast or participatory activities with online audiences.
The Inside/Out stage at Jacob's Pillow. Photo by Christopher Duggan.
“Leading for the Future will help trailblazing arts organizations continue to thrive in a society that is changing at lightning speed,” said Ben Cameron, director for the arts for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “Together with the Nonprofit Finance Fund, we hope to learn valuable lessons about how arts organizations can innovate, even when faced with the challenges of a slumping economy, shifting generational interests, and emerging technologies.”
President and CEO of NFF Clara Miller stated, “Leading for the Future participants have already proven themselves adept at artistic innovation; now, they will lead the way for arts organizations to reinvent their business platforms so the artistic side will be reliably supported.”
The Pillow will receive $75,000 for an initial year of planning, research and development. After four years of development, the organization will be eligible to receive up to (and possibly more than) one million dollars of support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Nonprofit Finance Fund.
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