The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation aims to develop South Florida as a world-class urban center. A thriving arts community makes Greater Miami a vibrant, connected and culturally engaging place to live. The Pérez CreARTE Grants Program invested $2 million in Miami-Dade County organizations aimed at expanding access to the arts and supporting top talent through residencies and fellowships as well as providing spaces for creation. Click here to see the 2019 Pérez CreARTE Program Guidelines.
CreARTE will not be open for submissions in 2020 as many of the 2019 investments were made as multi-year commitments. The team will spend 2020 building the capacity of the current grantees and refining the program to be re-launched in 2021. The Foundation is not accepting unsolicited proposals at this point in time.
Artist Fellowships and Residencies
Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) – $60,000
To sustain, grow and improve Artists in Residence in Everglades’s signature program – the artist residency – by augmenting the current monthly residency for multi-disciplinary artists and creating a new mini-residency specifically for local artists.
Edge Zones – $35,000
To sustain and expand Edge Zones’ artist residency activities, including two residencies for international artists, one curatorial residency, and four residencies for Florida artists of Caribbean-American and/or Latin-American heritage.
HistoryMiami Museum – $25,000
To strengthen and expand HistoryMiami Museum’s South Florida Folklife Center artist-in-residence program by increasing support for folk and traditional artists, which includes increasing artist honorariums, commissioning new works for the museum’s collection, and producing professional videos that document each residency and benefit the artists, the museum, the community, and researchers.
Miami Book Fair at Miami Dade College – $100,000
To launch the Emerging Writers Fellowship program, a new initiative that will support emerging literary voices who demonstrate exceptional talent and promise, by providing national visibility and deep-impact support for three writers working on a first book of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.
Miami Light Project – $50,000
To support the evolution and expansion of our core program MLP/AIR at The Light Box (extended Artists-in-Residence Program). The vision/goal of this program is to: support artists in critical stages of developing new work; to deeply connect the community with the artists’ process and impact.
Oolite Arts – $50,000
To elevate the careers of Miami’s artists and our city’s reputation as an art destination through its Home and Away program, which will facilitate and fund residency opportunities at four of America’s leading artist residency programs.
The Fountainhead Residency – $75,000
To support artists’ fellowships, MEET Artists meals, artist’s stipends, video and written communications, and general operations.
Arts Education and Access
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County – $200,000
To support and expand the Arsht Center’s free Learning Through the Arts education programs benefiting 55,000+ Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) students: Rock Odyssey for fifth grade, Kitty Hawk for seventh grade, and the development of a new ninth grade program to be launched in 2020-21.
Arts for Learning/Miami – $100,000
To support its visual art, theatre, music, and creative movement preschool programs at all Miami-Dade County Head Start classrooms to support the social emotional development of our community’s youngest and most vulnerable learners.
Guitars Over Guns – $100,000
To support GOGO’s after-school arts education programs, which invest in the creative development of underserved local youth by offering them access to opportunities to develop their artistic talents through an innovative embedded-mentorship model ensuring students feel heard, valued, creatively free while building skills and relationships going far beyond GOGO.
Miami City Ballet – $100,000
To support Miami City Ballet’s (MCB) Community Engagement initiatives that effectively eliminate barriers to arts education and access through thoughtful creative learning opportunities for students at every level of arts exploration, reaching more than 11,000 young people and families from throughout Miami-Dade County every year.
Miami Music Project – $100,000
To support Miami Music Project’s capacity building initiatives as outlined in our 2018-2028 strategic vision of scaling up by expanding program reach for the benefit of Miami’s at-risk populations and communities.
O, Miami – $70,000
To stabilize, refine, and institutionalize O, Miami’s Sunroom program. The Sunroom inspires a love of language, promotes self-expression, and builds community pride by (1) installing poets-in-residence in under-resourced elementary schools to facilitate poetry workshops; and (2) using art-in-public-places projects to broadcast student poems back into the community.
The Motivational Edge – $35,000
To support a life-readiness model that exposes youth to digital arts and merchandising operations while creating a pipeline toward a sustainable revenue source for the organization and teenagers as they transition into adulthood.
Young Musicians Unite – $70,000
To support partnerships with Brownsville Middle School (BMS), West Little River K- 8 (WLR), and Northwestern Senior High School (NWS) to create vibrant in-school music programming, restart the feeder pattern, and ensure consistent music education from grades 1 through 12.
Spaces for Creation
African Heritage Cultural Arts Center – $100,000
To develop a building program, master plan and schematic design to create concept drawings for a 21st century successor to the legendary African Heritage Cultural Arts Center (AHCAC) – a re-imagined, new campus of state-of-the-art buildings that will offer a variety of cultural, educational, and community activities in Liberty City.
Bakehouse Art Complex – $100,000
To provide operating support to continue to offer rent relief to promising artists with demonstrated potential and financial need. This includes providing artists with studio space, exhibition opportunities, access to resources, peers, programs, and art-making facilities that will advance their development and practice.
Greater Opa-locka Community Development Corporation – $50,000
To fund the renovation of the historical VFW Building in Opa-locka so that it can become a viable movement studio that will serve the growing needs of the theatrical, artistic, spoken word, performance art, and dance community.
Miami New Drama – $100,000
To access new space for the creation of Miami-centered new work and expansion of well-rounded and innovative education programs.
Moonlighter Makerspace – $50,000
To expand the Fabrication Laboratory, S.T.E.A.M. Learning Center, and Maker’s Studios into a new 7,000 sqft innovation lab in Miami Beach.
Nu Deco Ensemble – $50,000
To support the creation of a Nu Deco headquarters that will be a catalyst for the creation of new work, expand opportunities for our artists and local community, as well as significantly advance organizational efficiency by centralizing artistic, creative, and administrative activity.
O Cinema – $100,000
To support O Cinema’s strategy for long-term stability including the acquisition and renovation of a brand new film center in North Miami, O Cinema Film Center (OCFC); expansion of educational initiatives with a focus on film production and new technologies in cinema; and new programs featuring South Florida filmmakers.