New York City

Adrienne Doyle headshot – a Black woman with glasses and a lip piercing, with teal and lilac braids, wearing a black hoodie

Adrienne Doyle: Burn Something, Build Something

Which is more important: art or the people who make it? Some say art eclipses its creators, and some artists sacrifice themselves for their work. But Adrienne Doyle, a curator, writer, and zine…


Community Heroes display

Community Heroes

Through Creative Exchange, we are always excited to share toolkits from creative community projects – especially ones created by artists, and using resources from Springboard for the Arts like the…


Chitra Vairavan is Committed to Seeking

Chitra Vairavan started dancing when she was two years old, watching her older sister learn and practice South Indian Classical dance. Vairavan was born and raised on the north side of Milwaukee (on…


Immersive Theatre in the Time of Coronavirus

By its very nature, immersive theatre doesn't lend itself well to social distancing. Immersive theatre has become increasingly popular in recent years, thanks to any number of factors—big production…


Women of Color in the Arts organizes and mobilizes women of color cultural workers

Women of Color in the Arts (WOCA) just celebrated its 10-year anniversary this past January at the annual Association for Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Conference in New York, where the…


Cado Musica

Take an artful break with these live-streamed events and performances

Whether you are currently responsibly practicing social distancing or live in a place under strict stay-at-home orders, it's probably difficult to feel very creatively engaged right now. So much of…


Maria de Los Angeles tells "Migration Stories"

June is Immigrant Heritage Month as well as Refugee Awareness Month. In solidarity and support, we will run a series of artist profiles and features this month about the experiences of undocumented…


Jer Thorp creates data-based public art to engage and empower communities

Jer Thorp is an accomplished public speaker—check out some of his selected talks here—and an artist based in New York who has participated in highly visible public art projects, like designing the…


Caroline Woolard defines what it means to be a solidarity economy artist

The work of Springboard for the Arts is rooted in arts-based economic and community development. We believe artists are critical assets in that work, and support them by offering a variety of…


The Chinatown Art Brigade fights for housing rights in one of the most gentrified cities in America

Ten years ago, when urban activists spoke of "gentrification" they might as well have been speaking of the Bogeyman. Often dismissed as so much liberal hand-wringing, gentrification was an urban…


It's not enough to just Get Artists Paid; it's time to stage an Art.Exit

The work of Springboard for the Arts is rooted in arts-based economic and community development. We believe artists are critical assets in that work, and support them by offering a variety of…


5 Questions with Creative Exchange: What we have learned from our artists

Since August 2016, Creative Exchange has been asking each of our Artists With Impact a series of five questions, which appear at the end of every profile. We did this to create a thread of continuity…


Ori Alon spreads positivity through paperwork

Ori Alon's inspiration for the Center for Supportive Bureaucracy began ten years ago when he was an art student in West Jerusalem. He started a performance project by sitting in outdoor markets with…


Spencer Merolla uses ashes and the visual language of mourning in her post-election art

Spencer Merolla says she has been interested in art for as long as she can remember, having grown up with a mother who was an artist herself. But when she attended Wesleyan University she pursued a…


Ian Trask transforms one man's trash into another's treasure

Ian Trask didn't study art in school. Instead, he studied science, with the intention of pursuing a career in research and being able to "pursue something novel and new every day for the rest of my…


Six takeaways from IdeaLab

Need a little inspiration? There was plenty of it at IdeaLab 2017, which brought together creative minds from across the U.S. Here are a half-dozen useful pieces of advice that came out of the day's…


Dread Scott is a revolutionary artist whose work takes an unflinching look at Black lives in America

In 1857, Dred Scott, an enslaved Black man, unsuccessfully sued for his freedom on the grounds that he, along with his wife and daughters, had lived in free territories for four years. In the…


Fran Ilich believes another world is possible

Fran Ilich grew up in Tijuana next to the San Diego border. As a "border kid" in Mexico, Ilich has spent his life existing in a space somewhere in between – not quite Latin enough for Mexico,…


Shagun Singh and Rick Lin

Urban Matter Inc. creates interactive installations that combine technology, design, and community

This story is supported by a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Knowledge Building grant supporting a partnership between Springboard for the Arts and the International Downtown Association.…


2 Years of Creative Exchange!

It’s hard to believe, but Creative Exchange just turned 2! The platform was launched in 2014 in response to the question, “How do we support a movement around the power of local art and artists on a…


Katie Pearl

PearlDamour sees the way home in the stars over Milton, America

The North Star is how travelers have found their way home for thousands of years. Located on the handle of the Little Dipper, the most recognizable constellation in the sky, the North Star points…


Jen Cole

Sharing, Building, Leading

What does the passion for local art look like on a national scale? What if the sharing economy valued sharing?          What can we do to connect people to resources that support their creative…


Katy Rubin

Theatre of the Oppressed NYC uses theatre to address social justice issues

This is the second in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. The first, on Detroit's Allied Media Conference, can be…