ARTIST SUPPORT
ARCOS offers support and mentorship to independent dance artists in Austin throughout the process of supporting their practices and projects, providing logistical and creative guidance. Current artist support programs include the DADA microgrant and ARCOS Presents production mentorship.
Dance Artist Development Award
ARCOS Foundation for the Arts provides the Dance Artist Development Award (DADA) to honor independent professional dance artists in Austin seeking to deepen, expand, or refine their practices. While many grants provide funding for artistic projects, the impact of which can be quantified (for example, by measuring artists paid or audience members directly affected), this award is intended to provide dance artists the opportunity to take a risk to explore a practice- rather than product-based pursuit that may have profound, long-term effects on their creative development and work going forward. Prior recipients have used the development funds to explore new movement modalities within and outside of our community, work with mentors to strengthen their self-producing capacity, and conduct leadership training in art as social engagement and activism. The DADA has been on hiatus since the pandemic and will return in 2024.
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2018
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2017
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2016
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2015
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ARCOS Presents
ARCOS Presents program offers mentorship to independent dance artists throughout the process of producing their own work, providing both logistical and creative guidance, and direct and in-kind resources. Past ARCOS Presents artists include University of Texas at Austin alums the anxious 20yr olds’ This Isn’t New (2017) at Museum of Human Achievement, interdisciplinary tap artist Michael J. Love’s The Auralvisual Mixtape Collection, Part II: Dope Fit! (2019) at the Carver Museum and Cultural Center, and Angelica Monteiro’s Narratives of the Migrant Body (2023) at Motion Media Arts Center. Applications for the next ARCOS Presents mentorship will open in 2024.
Fiscal Sponsorship
Previously, ARCOS served as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor primarily to Austin-based artists by providing financial management and administrative support for municipal arts grants. Since the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division launched revised funding programs that no longer require fiscal sponsorship for application, this is no longer one of ARCOS’ currently offered forms of arts service.
Past fiscally sponsored artists and projects include Magdalena Jarkowiec’s In Here at Fusebox Festival (2018) and Us Kids Are Alone In The House at Salvage Vanguard Theater (2016), Millie Heckler’s SoulFunktion Yes Body summer dance parties (2018), Esther Bramlett’s Articulate Austin Series (2019), and Michael J. Love’s virtual-hybrid Beatbox Series (2020-21).