Founded in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can has grown from a one-day, twelve-hour music festival to a multi-faceted organization that includes a touring and recording ensemble (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), a commissioning program, a professional development/music institute for composers, conductors and performers, recording and Internet projects and other programs that bring cutting-edge music to a wide audience.
Cool Culture Fair 2005
Evidence Dance Company
Launched in 1981, BOMB Magazine, aka New Art Publications, is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that publishes interviews and essays in which emerging and established artists can speak openly about their work. BOMB's interviews are primary documents of American cultural history, with an archive of over 800 conversations between artists, writers, architects, directors, and musicians. The magazine aims to reveal, intimately and intellectually, the artist's creative process through in-depth conversation between peers.
Cool Culture
is dedicated to facilitating low-income families’ access to and participation in the cultural life of New York City. The organization reaches over 32,000 families at 368 Head Start and city-funded day care centers and 101 Universal Pre-Kindergarten programs. Through partnerships with 71 of the City’s major museums, botanical gardens, and zoos, Cool Culture provides access, information, and support so that low-income parents and their children can take advantage of these remarkable educational resources.
Creative Outlet
Founded in 1994, this Brooklyn-based arts organization, under the artistic direction of Jamel Gaines, trains professional artists, produces new multimedia works, and tours internationally. Creative Outlet runs a nationally recognized Cultural Arts Program for Young Artists, and also conducts in-school Arts in Education workshops and residencies. Creative Outlet acts as a vehicle for artists and the community to experience art that nurtures their physical, mental, and spiritual well being.
Evidence, A Dance Company
Under the artistic leadership of Brooklyn native and choreographer Ronald K. Brown, Evidence, A Dance Company focuses on the seamless fusion of traditional African dance, modern, ballet and hip-hop dance styles. Founded in 1985, the company’s mission is to promote understanding of the human experience in the African Diaspora and to provide sensory connections to history and tradition through music, movement, and spoken word.
Franklin Furnace
Founded in 1976 by artist Martha Wilson, Franklin Furnace’s mission is to present, preserve, interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content. During its 20th anniversary season, Franklin Furnace reinvented itself as a “virtual institution,” not identified with its real estate but rather with its resources, made accessible by electronic and other means.
The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporian Art (MoCADA) is Brooklyn's first and only African American/Diasporian museum. It is committed to increasing public awareness of the art and culture of the African Diaspora as it relates to contemporary issues through innovative exhibitions, public programs, interactive tours for school groups and families, and community outreach initiatives.
New York Writers Coalition (NYWC)
creates opportunities to be heard, through the art of writing, for formerly voiceless members of society. NYWC provides free, unique and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk youth, the homeless and formerly homeless, the formerly incarcerated, seniors and others.
Scenarios USA
is a non-profit organization that uses writing and filmmaking to foster youth leadership, advocacy and self-expression in under-served teens. Scenarios USA asks young people to write about the issues that shape their lives for the annual “What’s the REAL DEAL?” writing contest, and the winning writers are partnered with some of Hollywood’s finest filmmakers to transform their stories into award-winning short films watched by over 15 million people a year.
Story Corps
is a national project that instructs and inspires people to record each other’s stories in sound. Participants can interview their friends, loved ones, or anyone whose story they wish to hear and preserve. Anyone can make history in two StoryBooth locations in Manhattan, and in MobileBooths located around the country. Those who take part in the project receive a CD of the recording, which is also archived at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Selected excerpts are played on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.
WITNESS
uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. They empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change. Over the past decade, WITNESS has partnered with groups in more than 70 countries, bringing often unseen images and seldom heard voices to the attention of key decision makers, the media, and the general public -- catalyzing grassroots activism, political engagement, and lasting change.