Home > Domains > Arts & Cultures

Arts & Cultures

We help support folk arts, Native American art, music, tactile art, and artistically significant crafts that foster human creativity.

Our focus in native and folk arts and cultures supports the intergenerational transmission of artistic skill and cultural knowledge. We work with grantee partners in particular regions of interest to help advance and sustain intergenerational transmission at a community level.  MACP also supports greater access to music education and opportunities for youth to develop skills in music, to enhance their personal growth, and to expose them to their own and other cultures. 

Our Native Arts & Cultures program supports work in three regions to include the Northwest (Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana); Southwest (Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico); and Upper Midwest (North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin).

Our Folk Arts & Cultures program supports Nordic American Folk Arts & Cultures in the Upper Midwest to include North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Our Music Education program is an emerging area of interest and is currently focused on a small portfolio of grants to support ongoing learning and exploration in particular regions of the U.S, British Columbia, Canada, and work with a multinational context.

$28,750,000

Total Granted in 2022

Native Arts & Cultures

Two men look closely at an earthenware vase. The man in the forefront is holding the vase while wearing light blue gloves and both men wear glasses. The vase has geometric designs in black and reddish orange ink around the middle and it rests on a foam plate. The man in the forefront is SAR Jim Enote of the Zuni Pueblo tribe.

Our grantmaking helps ensure that Native arts and cultures in the regions where we work are more deeply understood, more widely practiced, and more broadly recognized. We support organizations working directly in community so that artistic skills and cultural knowledge can thrive sustainably. 

Building community connections through hide work with a story from grantee partner The CIRI Foundation in Alaska

Educating the next generation of Indigenous artists with a story from grantee partner University of South Dakota – Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute

Folk Arts & Cultures

A man with white hair and beard wearing a green shirt with the sleeves rolled strums a guitar inside of a room with large windows and sunlight shining through them. The windows have eleven other stringed instruments hanging on display.

Our vision for impact in the Folk Arts & Cultures (FAC) program is that in the places where MACP is working with grantee partners, folk arts and cultures will be more deeply understood, more broadly recognized, and more widely practiced. 

Our work is driven by concern that the lack of intergenerational transfer of artistic skill and cultural knowledge threatens the continuity of folk arts and cultures. MACP aims to address this problem by supporting the work of a select number of organizations that in turn support communities of artistic practice in the Upper Midwest and Central Appalachia. 

Supporting emerging artists in Central Appalachia