How do we fund the arts in the Cincinnati region? It’s through you and me, a tradition that harkens back more than seven decades to the inception of the ArtsWave Community Campaign. This Campaign has become a model for other communities as the first and largest community campaign in the nation. Every year, tens of thousands of individuals and hundreds of businesses come together each year to support 100+ art projects, organizations through the ArtsWave Campaign.
The innovative and philanthropic spirit and roots behind ArtsWave trace back to late 1920s to early 1930s, when Charles Phelps Taft and Anna Sinton Taft made several bold moves to preserve and develop the arts and culture with the city. One was to bequeath their art collection and home to the community, thereby creating the Taft Museum of Art. Another was to put forth $1 million to fund the arts, with a challenge to the people of Cincinnati to raise $2.5 million to match it. That’s a challenge that Cincinnatians met, and that tradition of giving lives on today through ArtsWave.
Your gift to ArtsWave is more critical than ever this year, as the arts prepare to restart the region, post-pandemic. In addition to the art projects, organizations and artists it will support, it’ll include dedicated programs to support African American Arts. It will include hundreds of thousands of arts education experiences for the region’s school children. It’ll include support for one if not the hardest hit industries from the pandemic. Simply put, its funding for the entire region and its future.
Make your gift today at artswave.org/give, and together we will ensure our arts remain an engine of growth and force for positive change.