Border Patrol is awarded $50,000 Creative Corps Grant

BORDER PATROL RECEIVES HISTORIC GRANT
The curatorial collective is one of 18 grantees participating in the first ever California Creative Corps program. Each grantee is given $50,000 to produce arts programming over the next year and a salary with benefits to support the administrative work related to their project. The CAC invited 18th Street Arts Center and 13 other arts organizations across the state to administer the funds. Border Patrol's application was one of 375 that 18th Street Arts Center received.

Over the next year Border Patrol members Jared Haug, Meg Hahn, Baxter Koziol, and Elizabeth Spavento will occupy spaces K4 and K5 of the Brundage Swap Meet, an indoor flea market in downtown Bakersfield, California. The collective will stage exhibitions, host community workshops, publish multiple texts, solicit work through open calls, and other events throughout our tenure at the indoor market. Our programming will focus on:

1. Exhibitions and public engagement events related to the material history of khaki and its relationship to contemporary white supremacist terrorist groups
2. A pop-up publication studio with an emphasis on publishing artists who are currently/formerly detained or imprisoned and an art book fair featuring local, regional, and national artists
   
3. An R.I.P. artist-in-residence series in which visiting artists are invited to explore the politics and aesthetics of grief and death

Programming will begin in September, so please check back for updates, events, and ways to get involved. For inquiries, please email us.

ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA CREATIVE CORPS GRANT
The 2021 State Budget included a $60 million one-time General Fund allocation for the California Arts Council to implement the California Creative Corps pilot program, a media, outreach, and engagement campaign designed to increase:

1. Public health awareness messages to stop the spread of COVID-19;
2. Public awareness related to water and energy conservation, climate mitigation, and emergency preparedness, relief, and recovery;
3. Civic engagement, including election participation;
4. Social justice and community engagement.
   

Grant guideline development began with the convening of California Creative Corps Community Development Panels, first by region and then with one statewide panel including representatives from each region. The panels included artists, culture bearers, creative individuals, and arts administrators that represented the priority populations to be engaged, and who work in the intersectional focus areas of the Creative Corps program. The panels articulated their communities’ values, needs, and opportunities, and identified ways in which the Creative Corps program might address them, eventually landing on the four focus areas listed above.

ABOUT 18th STREET ARTS CENTER
18th Street Arts Center is one of the top artist residency programs in the US, and the largest in Southern California. Conceived as a radical think tank in the shape of an artist community, 18th Street supports artists from around the globe to imagine, research, and develop significant, meaningful new artworks and share them with the public. We are a nonprofit that strives to provide artists the space and time to take risks, to foster the ideal environment for artists and the public to directly engage, and to create experiences and partnerships that foster positive social change. Our mission is to provoke public dialogue through contemporary art-making. We believe that:

1. Art making is an essential component of a vibrant, just and healthy society.
2. Creative action is a vital part of individual wellbeing.
3. Humanity benefits when artists are valued.

Instagram: @18thStreetArts


ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA ARTS COUNCIL
Culture is the strongest signifier of California’s identity. As a state agency, the California Arts Council supports local arts infrastructure and programming statewide through grants, programs, and services. Our mission is to strengthening arts, culture, and creative expression as the tools to cultivate a better California for all.

Instagram: @CalArtsCouncil