For years, the Chicago-based nonprofit grant-making organization 3Arts has supported local artists with awards of unrestricted funds. This year, it has upped the ante.
The organization’s Next Level Awards are $50,000 grants given to past 3Arts awardees and this year, the award was expanded to include two additional awards for teaching artists. Recipients were announced in a ceremony Monday night at the Harris Theater. The 2023 Next Level awards went to teaching artists Miguel “Kane One” Aguilar and Regin Igloria, as well as visual artists Dianna Frid, Edra Soto and Dorian Sylvain.
According to 3Arts, the $50,000 grants were the largest awards for teaching artists in the world.
“We wanted these Next Level awards to be significant enough that if an artist has a big dream or a big project that they want to put into play, they’ll have some resources to do it,” said 3Arts executive director Esther Grimm. “We’re thinking what would happen if we invested a larger amount in artists when they’re ready for it, when their careers have evolved, when they have big dreams and projects that they want to put into play, like going to the next level, basically.”
The five Next Level $50,000 awardees join the annual 10 3Arts awardees who received $30,000 unrestricted grants. The 2023 recipients include dance artists Donnetta “LilBit” Jackson and Rika Lin; musicians Rashada Dawan and Avreeayl Ra; teaching artists Jacinda Bullie and Eric Hotchkiss; theater artists Nancy García Loza and Charlotte “Chuck” Gruman; and visual artists Selva Aparicio and Jenny Kendler. And 10 other artists who took home $2,000 as part of the “Make a Wave” grants, an artist-to-artist grant wherein former 3Arts Award recipients select the winners.
