Asian American Arts Alliance

Locating the Sacred Festival – Information Session

Time: Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Time: 6:30PM to 8PM

Place: 25 West 43rd Street, 18th Floor
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan

“Locating the Sacred” is a twelve-day, twenty-event festival coordinated by the Asian American Arts Alliance (a4) that brings together artists and spaces in New York for creative explorations of the “sacred.” The festival showcases the diversity and talent of the Asian American community, which now constitutes more than 1 million people in New York (13 percent of the population) and is the most rapidly growing cultural group in the city. The artists will connect with space hosts—from museums to schools to churches—to create events together. The result of these collaborations will be presented for all New Yorkers to experience. The festival aims to promote artists as agents of change, demonstrating the power of art and culture to unleash imagination, break down barriers, and connect communities together for the greater good. At a time of great turmoil in the world—economic, political, and cultural—the festival provides opportunities to explore what remains sacred in our lives during turbulent times, how we might draw inspiration from each other, and how we can imagine moving forward as a society.

The model of the festival is simple. a4 will produce three pillar events: an opening, a closing, and a panel discussion series. For the other festival events, a4 will act as an umbrella, matching artists with space hosts in an attempt to generate creative collaborations across ethnic, religious, geographic and aesthetic boundaries. These events will benefit from the festival’s “stamp”, from underwriting for artist fees of up to $2,000 depending on the scope of the project, and from the exposure from the festival’s citywide PR and marketing campaign. The festival becomes the showcase of more than a dozen collaborations across the city, which we hope will continue long after the festival is over.

FESTIVAL: September 12-23, 2012

APPLICATION DEADLINE: February 20th, 2012

For details on applicant and project eligibility, please visit http://aaartsalliance.org/page/locating-the-sacred

Outreach Partners
Asian American / Asian Research Institute – CUNY
Bronx Council on the Arts
Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island
The Field
Harlem Arts Alliance
New York Foundation for the Arts
Queens Council on the Arts