YoungArts Announces Partnerships and Opportunities for 2020-21

National YoungArts Foundation today announced a network of strategic partnerships with discipline specific and regionally significant organizations across the country. In response to the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, YoungArts is activating and expanding its national network of partners to better serve award winners where they live. Building upon its preexisting partnerships, YoungArts is proud to announce the following key partners for the 2020/2021 season: Fountainhead (Miami, FL), Jacob's Pillow (Becket, MA), New York Live Arts (New York, NY), University of California Los Angeles's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) (Los Angeles, CA), The Watermill Center (Water Mill, NY). Through these partnerships, YoungArts is not only bolstering opportunities for artists, but also providing support to key institutions serving YoungArts award winners and local communities of artists. Additional partners and related programs will be announced at a later date.

Jewel Malone, YoungArts Executive Director, said, "As we look ahead, one of our biggest challenges will be to ensure that the arts and culture field as a whole remains vibrant as the world continues to be impacted by the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. During these devastating times YoungArts is working to double our efforts to support artists across disciplines and perspectives and to contribute to the arts ecology as a whole by teaming up with key partners across the country."

While the in person presentation of performing, visual and literary art remains uncertain due to the pandemic, YoungArts is prioritizing creative development support for YoungArts alumni. In partnership with a network of colleague institutions, YoungArts alumni will be provided residency opportunities in the cities they reside to create new projects or continue works in development.

This fall, choreographer and dancer Shamel Pitts (2003 YoungArts Winner in Dance) will be in residence at New York Live Arts in Manhattan working on Touch of Red. The work-part of Pitts' Red Series which aims to research and share the colorfulness within blackness-is an exploration of the power of vulnerability and the allowance of Black men to soften.

Beginning in late October, photographer Paige Mazurek (2007 YoungArts Winner in Photography) will be participating in a month-long mentorship residency at The Watermill Center outside of New York City. Working with Watermill alumna, Zeinab Shahidi Marnani, a text and video artist working in time-based media, Mazurek will be developing a new series of works.

In December, visual artist Malaika Temba (2014 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts) will be in residence at Fountainhead in Miami, a live/work artist residency inviting over 30 national and International Artists each year.

YoungArts will also join forces once again with long-time partner, UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance to present The Choreographers' Scores 2020, a rare look into choreographic practice, well before a dance is seen on stage. 28 choreographers from across the country were asked to conceive and create a handwritten instruction, drawing or pattern as inspiration for a work to be performed in the future. These visual dance scores, indicative and specific to each artists' style, will become part of a series of fine art limited edition prints for sale only by the collaborating partners and the artists themselves. Included in the group of participating choreographers are YoungArts alumni Camille A. Brown (1997, YoungArts Winner in Dance & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts), Shamel Pitts (2003 YoungArts Winner in Dance), and Caleb Teicher (2011 YoungArts Winner in Dance) as well as mentors to YoungArts award winners Kyle Abraham, Ann Carlson, Nora Chipaumire, Rosie Herrera and Bill T. Jones.

Next summer, through a continuing partnership with Jacob's Pillow, two YoungArts alumni will be presented on the Inside/Out Performance Stage as part of the Jacob's Pillow 2021 Festival.

YoungArts programs are available to YoungArts award winners. Entry into the program begins with the nation's leading arts competition for young artists. YoungArts is accepting applications through October 16, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

The YoungArts award competition is open to accomplished artists (1) between the ages of 15-18 or in high school grades 10-12 (as of December 1, 2020) (2) that are United States citizens or permanent residents and (3) that demonstrate excellence in Classical Music, Dance, Design Arts, Film, Jazz, Photography, Theater, Visual Arts, Voice or Writing.

Apply online at youngarts.org/apply.

Applications are judged by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through a rigorous blind adjudication process. 2021 award winners will be announced in late November.

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