News: Photography Project Receives Three Major Funding Awards
 |
 |
 |
The Public Policy Research Center’s Photography Project is the recipient of grant funding from three major arts organizations. The Photography Project was awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whitaker Foundation and the Regional Arts Commission.
The funds will support the 2009-2010 Photography Projects. Additionally, the NEA and RAC funds will help to commemorate the Project’s 5th anniversary, which will be celebrated in 2010. The Whitaker Foundation allocation will support cataloging and digitalizing the Project’s photo archives.
“The PPRC Photography Project is honored to receive this funding,” said Mel Watkin, the Project’s director. “Each year the Photography Project works with four or five groups that are involved in community revitalization, historical preservation or youth or older adult enrichment programs,” she explained. “We teach the participants to take high quality photographs to showcase their group’s accomplishments, and these photos are then exhibited in the community. The funding will support these ongoing programs, as well as enable the Photography Project to initiate new endeavors.”
The Photography Project’s schedule for 2009-10 includes four community groups and a special exhibition. The community groups are Lydia’s House (which provides 2-years of transitional housing and support services for abused women and their children), City Seeds (a gardening therapy and job training program of Gateway Greening for mentally ill or substance abuse clients of St. Patrick Center), Russian St. Louis (capturing the broad array of Russian activity throughout St. Louis’s Russian immigrant population of 17,000) and St. Vincent’s Children’s Home and School (a residential treatment center for abused and neglected children with emotional problems, behavior disorders, and/or learning disabilities). The fourth exhibit, a special event, will celebrate the Photography Project’s 5th anniversary with a major retrospective exhibition, a full color catalog and a new website and searchable database of its 500 photographs taken since 2004.