This year, the Wisconsin Arts Board invested over $207,200 in the work of 43 nonprofit organizations through the Creative Communities grant program.
The Creative Communities (CC) grants program encourages arts education, cultural understanding, and community arts development in Wisconsin. It provides support for projects that further WAB’s goals in the following three areas: Arts Education, Folk and Traditional Arts, and Local Arts. Through direct financial support of specific arts projects, WAB sustains the vitality of Wisconsin culturally, educationally and economically.
Explore the list of grant recipients and their projects in each category below.
Arts Education
Art Start Incorporated
The Artist Statement (TAS) is an interdisciplinary public art and career-readiness project that will take place during the 2026–2027 project period through Art Start’s Creative Connections program in Milwaukee. TAS was launched in 2025 and is designed to elevate youth voice while strengthening the literacy and career-development skills young people need to pursue education and employment in Milwaukee’s growing creative economy.
Artists Working in Education, Inc.
Art Connect is a new intergenerational, community-based arts initiative developed by AWE in partnership with the Washington Park Coalition. The project originated in late 2025 in direct response to neighborhood feedback gathered through Rooted & Rising’s community surveys, which consistently identified a desire for accessible, welcoming arts programming in the Washington Park area.
Betty Brinn Childrens Museum
The 2026 Community Artist Program at Betty Brinn Children’s Museum is a year-long, community-centered arts engagement initiative that will operate in its third year, having originated in 2024. The program integrates Milwaukee-based community artists into the Museum’s weekly public programming as part of general admission, and on their free Community Access Day, ensuring that children and families can participate in live, play-based arts experiences at no additional cost.
Flutes at Dawn, Inc.
“The Womb” is a community-centered project that takes a group of mothers with their children (age 8 and up) through a creative process that culminates in a live public performance. Weaving together music, dance, storytelling, and poetry, an intergenerational cast of 8–10 mothers with their 8–10 children will collaborate with 5–10 professional artists to co-create an original, multi-disciplinary performance
Isthmus Montessori Academy, Inc.
IMA(P) Adolescent Community Mural Project is a collaborative arts education project with Madison-based mural artist Lena Ugren (ChromaWallz). This initiative will begin in July 2026 and conclude in September 2026, culminating in the design and installation of a large-scale public mural on the west-facing exterior of the school along Packers Avenue. Working alongside students in the Adolescent program (7th–12th grade), the artist will guide a participatory design and installation process resulting in a permanent, mission-aligned artistic feature reflecting themes of education for all, civic responsibility, peace, global citizenship, and our relationship to the natural world.
KFAD, Inc.
Launching in Fall 2026, Theater Your Way will be Kids Fun & Drama (KFAD)’s first full year of structured theater education outside of production rehearsals. The expanded lineup of classes and workshops will include: Multi-week theater classes, One-day themed workshops, Tech-focused sessions, Showcase opportunities.
Madison Jazz Society, Inc.
Discover Jazz, launched in Year 1 as a community-centered, school-based jazz education outreach initiative, enters its third year with a focus on expansion, sustainability, and deepening school partnerships. In Year 3, the Madison Jazz Society will expand to additional schools while building long-term capacity among music educators and strengthening ties between schools and the local jazz community.
Milwaukee Public Schools Foundation, Inc.
Funding will continue to support the growth of Broadway Bridges, a national initiative that expands access to Broadway performances and arts education for high school students, particularly those with limited exposure to live theater or in-school arts programming. Adapted from the Broadway League’s successful program in New York, it provides students with opportunities to attend professional Broadway productions.
Neighborhood House of Milwaukee, Inc.
In 2026-2027, Neighborhood House will launch Hope Rising: Youth Storytelling through Art and Culture, a hands-on visual and performing arts project serving more than 400 children ages 3 to 18 from low-income households and under-resourced neighborhoods. The goals of the project are to help youth understand how hope, culture and nature intersect, and how art can be an accessible way to communicate concepts, emotions and individuality.
Spirit of a Woman, Inc.
Indigenous Girls Rock Camp (IGRC) is a music program for girls ages 8–18 that offers a unique blend of music education, performance, and leadership development. Guided by professional female music instructors, the intended outcomes for participants are to learn to play an instrument, form a band, write an original song, and showcase their work in a live community concert performance open to the public.
Still Waters Collective
The Youth Poetry Slam League combines creative writing workshops, performance training, and competitive poetry events for youth ages 12–19. The project will deliver approximately 16–20 free workshops during the 2026–27 school year at Milwaukee Public Library branches, schools, and community-based partner sites. The program culminates in a citywide slam competition, where youth participants perform original work in a judged format. The winning team advances to represent Wisconsin at the national Brave New Voices competition.
Folk and Traditional Arts
Bembe Drum & Dance
Entering its third year, Community Cultural Celebrations establishes monthly community cultural celebrations that are founded in Afro-Latino musical traditions and welcome all members of the community to participate, watch, and be in community. The traditions of Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba, Afro-Indigenous-Mexican Son Jarocho, and Afro- Colombian musical traditions (Bullerengue, Currulao, Cumbia) are communally practiced cultural art forms that include drumming, singing, rhythmic clapping and dancing. They are accessible artforms that can be learned by watching and listening in a welcoming, non-judgemental and inclusive space provided by Bembé’s staff and youth, teen and adult students for the greater community.
Eau Claire Area Hmong Mutual Assist Association, Inc.
Reviving Hmong Arts: Preserving Hmong Qeej responds to the community’s expressed need for culturally grounded programming that supports youth development, cultural pride, and a sense of belonging. Through this program, ECAHMAA aims to preserve the Qeej (a traditional Hmong instrument) by strengthening and increasing opportunities for public education and providing youth with opportunities to build confidence, develop leadership skills, and embrace their Hmong identity.
Hmong Autism Neurodiverse Disability Support
S.E.A. the Arts is an art festival that focuses on local, Southeast Asian artists by promoting their merchandise, artwork, through demonstrations, and performances. The first year this project started was 2026. 2027 will be the second year it will occur. This project aims to uplift Southeast Asian artists by the Southeast Asian community.
Milwaukee Muslim Womens Coalition
Celebrating Palestine 2027: A Cultural Experience will feature cultural exhibitions that honor, celebrate, and emphasize the beauty of Palestine and Palestinian culture. An immersive cultural experience for the entire family, Celebrating Palestine 2027 will showcase art, music, dance, food, a fashion show, and more.
Oshkosh Public Museum
The Oshkosh Public Museum is hosting an outdoor exhibition traveling from the Wisconsin Historical Society as part of their American 250 activities. The Museum's outdoor history walks tour is called "We like to kick up our heels". It is a powerful exhibition featuring large-scale reproductions of historical images depicting communities coming together across cultures through dance, displayed on the Museum's lawn from August 3 through October 30.
WI Tamil Sangam, Inc.
The organization's project involves inviting a seasoned Parai instructor--Dr. M. Subbiah, Department of Performing Arts, Pondicherry University, India-- to teach a series of workshops on learning to play the parai drum and understand its central role in South Indian folk-dance forms in Madison, WI, from October 22, 2026, to Nov. 22, 2026. These workshops will provide foundational knowledge in establishing their own parai team of percussion artists.
Local Arts
City of Middleton
Since 2023, Stone Horse Green has presented summer concerts by local singer-songwriters and emerging bands. In 2026, Middleton CDA’s new Placemaking Planner seeks to launch a new series of events rebranded as the Summer Music & Arts Series, which will significantly increase the diversity and impact of the program, as well as expand the series to 14 events from May through September.
Friends of the Hurley Public Library
The Community Art Series is a free, hands-on arts program led by local artists and open to all community members. The project’s goal is to provide meaningful, participatory arts experiences that engage community members of all ages while supporting local artists and promoting creative collaboration.
Friends of Wabeno
Funds will support a creative community arts project to engage community members in group sensemaking, using collaborative mural art as a participatory medium of expression. Specifically, this project will generate a series of community-generated murals, for display at local businesses and town halls. Friends of Wabeno's goal is to foster conversations and build understanding, trust, and respect around the things we value and share.
Holmen Area Community Center
The organization's proposed program, Creative Community Collab, is an arts and educational program to promote the diverse cultural heritage of our region. Six monthly programs; three in Fall 2026 and three in Winter 2027, will explore traditional skills to promote community identity and intergenerational learning. Each program will collaborate with local artists, the Holmen Area Historical Society, the Holmen School District and HACC staff and volunteers to develop the program.
In Tandem Theatre
Shakespeare in the Park Festival (SIPF) began in summer 2025. In 2026, In Tandem Theatre's goal is to capture more attention, increase audience and garner more support for classical theatre produced professionally and free to the general public. In addition, the business community is part of the festival with food trucks and vendors. The play is Much Ado About Nothing, in which malicious gossip nearly causes the end of the relationship of two people about to be married, marring her good name in the process.
IPAMA
IPAMA will commission a collaborative public artwork created by artists Brad Bernard and Charlie Palmer that commemorates early African American veterans and elevates the often hidden or minimized historical contributions of African American soldiers. This project will center on a community-driven artistic process that brings veterans, artists, and local residents together to reflect on themes of service, sacrifice, faith, and belonging.
Jambalaya Arts
Jamb Sessions will offer five consistent, community‑centered programs designed to expand creative access and participation. These activities form the grant‑supported portion of Jambalaya Arts' work and reflect community requests for affordable, inclusive, hands‑on arts experiences. All grant‑supported activities will take place at The Jamb, an accessible, single‑level arts space. Programs follow a predictable schedule that supports participation and evaluation.
La Pointe Center
Funds will support a series of workshops and events throughout the winter at the La Pointe Center, inviting local artists to share their craft with the community. Classes and events they would offer include painting classes, needle felting, and workshops introducing native/folk arts and crafts. By partnering with artists and other organizations, the organization will offer a diverse range of classes, learning opportunities, open mic nights, and gallery events.
LOUD
Latinos Organizing for Understanding and Development (LOUD) is launching the Creative Communities Exhibition Series: Latina Artists, Cultural Memory, and Día de los Muertos, designed to expand access to Latino arts experiences and strengthen collaborative cultural engagement across Wisconsin communities. This single-year project brings together artists, cultural organizations, and public audiences through three coordinated exhibitions developed in partnership with local and regional collaborators.
Midwest Mujeres
“El Sueño Americano a través de los ojos de las mujeres de las Américas / The American Dream Through the Eyes of Women of the Americas” is a six-week community storytelling project, beginning in July and culminating in a free public showcase in late fall. This project expands Midwest Mujeres’ existing storytelling work and is intentionally aligned with the U.S. Semiquincentennial to reflect on whose stories shape the American Dream.
Milwaukee Film
Dialogues Documentary Festival (DDF) is an annual documentary festival from Milwaukee Film that champions and empowers documentarians in their efforts to open conversations and expand minds. This festival takes place in the Fall, providing programming balance with the organization's annual 15-day Milwaukee Film Festival in the Spring.
Monroe Street Arts Center
Monroe Street Arts Center is continuing their Create & Connect program in the 2026-27 academic year because of the need it addresses: accessible, community-centered creative engagement for adults. They were inspired to create this program in response to the loneliness epidemic affecting Wisconsin's communities. By offering free, accessible art-making opportunities, Create & Connect becomes a welcoming, low-barrier gathering space where adults can build relationships, develop creative confidence, and experience genuine belonging.
Neighborhood House Community Center
For more than 80 years, Neighborhood House (NH) has delivered engaging, empowering programs for children and families who lack access to resources and experience challenges connected to poverty. Their work focuses on helping children realize their full potential through education, recreation and the arts. In 2026-2027, NH will launch Hope Rising: Youth Storytelling through Art and Culture, a hands-on visual and performing arts project serving more than 400 children ages 3 to 18 from low-income households and under-resourced neighborhoods.
Northcentral Technical College
The Film, Farm & Culture Fest of Wausau (FFCFW) is an annual community event that brings audiences and aspiring filmmakers together to celebrate award-winning independent films selected from top-tier film festivals. Piloted in the summer of 2025 and organized by Jila Nikpay, a filmmaker and Northcentral Technical College (NTC) Video Production Faculty member, the FFCFW includes fiction and documentary films that thoughtfully explore people's primal relationships with the land in small towns and villages worldwide. This unique focus is drawn from the farming identity of Wausau, WI and how that identity has shaped its cultural diversity.
NorthWoods Strings
Bringing String Music to our Rural Area is a collaboration between NorthWoods Strings and the Red Cedar Symphony, the Shell Lake Arts Center, and tribal member Lisa Clemens, bringing metis fiddler Jamie Fox and Matt Lammers and the NorthWoods String Quartet to conduct student workshops and community performances. The purpose of the organization's project is to inspire and support string music education in their rural area and raise awareness of both classical and indigenous string instrument music.
Philadelphia Community Farm
The Wilderness is an interdisciplinary outdoor performance created by Open Flame Theatre that integrates original music, movement, clown, mask, and physical theater to explore questions of identity, land, imagination, and what it means to live in relationship with the natural world. First presented as work-in-progress showings in 2025, the project remains under three years old. The 2026 presentation at Philadelphia Community Farm (PCF) will mark its first full rural production and the first time this evolving work is rooted in extended collaboration with a rural Wisconsin community.
Prairie Music & Arts
The Artful Memories project, developed by Prairie Music & Arts (PMA) and the Colonial Club Senior Activity Center in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, aims to enhance the lives of adults living with memory loss through a cohesive arts-based approach. Recognizing the positive benefits of artistic experiences on mental wellness and cognitive function in older adults, the project will offer adults who are displaying mild to mid stage dementia essential opportunities to create, stimulate brain function, and build community.
Rainbow House Domestic Abuse Service
Funds will suport Rainbow House Domestic Abuse Services' 12–14 session art therapy initiative for adult survivors of relationship violence, culminating in a collaborative public art installation and community engagement event during Domestic Violence Awareness Month (October). This project centers survivor voices while offering a trauma-informed space for creative expression and reflection.
Ridgeland Area Library
The Ridgeland Area Library Barn Quilt Project is designed to celebrate and preserve the rural heritage of our community while expanding access to folk art opportunities for residents of all ages. Barn quilts are a recognized form of American folk art that combine traditional quilting patterns with rural landscapes. Through the project community members will paint barn quilts that reflect personal stories, family history, and agricultural heritage while contributing to a growing barn quilt trail in the Ridgeland area.
Riverwest Artists Association
Within the Local Ekphrastic poetry workshop series, adult high school students and recent alumni alongside OWL (Older, Wiser, Local) attendees will come together at the Jazz Gallery to learn the craft of ekphrastic poetry from local Wisconsin poetry workshop instructors who focus on ekphrastic writing. Workshop participants will be given copies of the instructors’ published books for examples of ekphrastic poetry to assist with guiding instruction. Ekphrastic poetry is defined simply as writing poetry off of artwork, and for this project, ekphrastic writing will be done off of art within the gallery by local Milwaukee and surrounding areas visual artists. Once completed, there will be published a cumulative anthology of all poetry from participants.
Third Space Green Bay
As a part of its yearly programming centering belonging, creativity and connection, Third Space Green Bay will host a free queer zine making workshop at their Art Garage location. The zine making workshop will be led by one or two queer artists and will connect adults in Green Bay, particularly BIPOC and/or queer adults and their friends/allies, with their inner artist as they create their own zines. This community workshop would be oriented towards all skill levels and a variety of supplies would be offered for use: paper, markers, collage materials, watercolor pens and crayons.
Unmasked Expressive Therapies
Memories in the Making is a watercolor-based expressive arts program designed to support individuals experiencing early memory loss and their loved ones. This project represents a new component of Unmasked Expressive Therapies' existing Memories in the Making program - transitioning the project from a pro bono model to a grant-subsidized, no-fee delivery model, ensuring the program remains free for all participants while compensating the therapist and covering operational costs for the first time. Care partners, who are essential to the therapeutic experience, will be able to fully participate alongside their loved ones at no cost. The program will involve the person with cognitive decline, the caretiver and an art therapist and a second support person, either a volunteer or staff member, working in tandem during each session.
Valley Academy for the Arts
Dancing Through Generations is a community-centered arts initiative led by Valley Academy for the Arts (VAA) that expands access to high-quality dance programming by bringing adaptive, professionally led movement experiences into nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and community spaces across Outagamie and Winnebago Counties. The project is intentionally designed to address critical gaps in access to the arts while advancing the role of dance as both an artistic discipline and a powerful tool for connection, expression, and well-being.
Wisconsin Asian American Voices for Empowerment
Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Stories Project is a storytelling initiative led by the AAPI Coalition of Wisconsin and its new sister organization, Wisconsin Asian American Voices for Empowerment (WAAVE). The Coalition is a network of AAPI-serving organizations, and WAAVE engages individual community members and volunteers. The project includes storytelling workshops in two cities (Milwaukee in summer 2026, Madison in 2027), community member-hosted practice circles, public showcases, and an educational media campaign.
Wisconsin Dance Council
Funds will support the Wisconsin Dance Council's professional dance mentorship program. This initiative provides rehearsal space, stipends, mentorship, a public showcase, and a post-performance discussion about the creative process. The project’s goal is to provide emerging artists with the time, space, mentorship, and resources necessary to develop high-quality choreographic work while strengthening their professional trajectory. The intended outcome is that participating artists will increase their ability to sustain professional careers within Wisconsin’s dance ecosystem.
Wormfarm Institute
Walking + Talking: Stories in Motion is a socially engaged, land-based, durational art project that brings together immigrant agricultural workers, Wisconsin farmers, artists, and community members to explore shared relationships to land, labor, migration, and belonging. Originating during Wormfarm’s 2024 Farm/Art DTour, the project was conceived by artist María Patricia Tinajero in partnership with Puentes/Bridges. The project unfolds through two complementary components: (1) immersive long-distance walks through Wisconsin farmland that provide a framework for conversation, farm visits, and community gatherings, and (2) creative documentation, including bilingual (Spanish/English) zines and recordings that blend testimony, drawing, and mapping. In the fall of 2025, Tinajero walked 50 miles of the 150-mile route between Wormfarm (Sauk County) and Puentes/Bridges (Buffalo County), visited five farms, and produced a first bilingual zine with Ope!