We’re thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2024 Joyce Awards, marking the 20th anniversary of the Foundation’s annual awards program supporting artists of color in the creation of new works with organizational partners across the Great Lakes region. With the expansion of each grant from $75,000 to $100,000, this year marks the Awards’ largest total amount given to date, with $500,000 in grants to support five community-centered, artistic projects. This year’s awardees deeply engage Great Lakes communities through co-creation and collaboration across disciplines including theater, music, and sculpture, to explore diverse cultural identities, invigorate public spaces, and foster healing and connection. Each pair will receive a grant of $100,000 to support a new commission, with at least $30,000 going to the artist as a stipend.
The 2024 Joyce Award winners are:
- Andrea Assaf with the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn): Writer, director, and performer Andrea Assaf will create DRONE, a multimedia theatre production that confronts the militarized use of drone technology, the ethics of remote-control warfare, and the human cost of war.
- Marcus Elliot with the Detroit Parks Coalition (Detroit): Detroit-based saxophonist, composer, and educator Marcus Elliot will create Sounds from the Park, a suite of site-specific musical works composed to illuminate the diverse stories, histories, and cultures of Detroit’s parks and their surrounding neighborhoods.
- Terry Guest with Chicago Children’s Theatre (Chicago): Playwright and teaching artist Terry Guest will create Milo Imagines the World, a new musical adapted from the eponymous children’s book that addresses the impact of incarceration on families while fostering resilience and healing.
- Katie Ka Vang with Theater Mu (Minneapolis-Saint Paul): Hmong American playwright Katie Ka Vang will develop Hmong Futures, a new theater project illuminating the diverse stories of the Hmong diaspora in Minneapolis-Saint Paul and reflecting on the 50th anniversary of Hmong and Southeast Asian resettlement in the United States.
- Edra Soto with The Sculpture Center (Cleveland): Puerto-Rican-born, Chicago-based artist Edra Soto will collaborate with Latinx artists and the Cleveland community to create her first major Midwest project outside of Chicago, La Distancia—an outdoor sculptural installation and immersive gallery exhibition exploring themes of displacement, diasporic identity, and memory through place-based interventions.
Proposals for the 2024 Joyce Awards were reviewed by an independent jury of leading arts professionals, including past awardees:
Andrew Cone, Chief Strategy Officer, Whitney Museum of American Art
Sandra Delgado, writer, actor, singer, and producer; 2015 Joyce Award recipient with Teatro Vista
Daniel Gray-Kontar, Lecturer/Community Arts Partner, Stanford University Institute for Diversity in the Arts; 2020 Joyce Award recipient (Twelve Literary Arts) with Terrel Wallace
Jessica Hong, Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Toledo Museum of Art
Shaunda McDill, Managing Director, Pittsburgh Public Theater
Polly Morris, Executive Director, Lynden Sculpture Garden; 2021 Joyce Award recipient with Daniel Minter
Reggie Wilson, Choreographer, Artistic Director, and Founder, Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group; 2012 Joyce Award recipient with Columbia College Chicago
The 2024 awardees join an outstanding group of artists and leaders who have built a legacy of transformative art across Great Lakes communities. As we mark two decades of the Joyce Awards, we want to celebrate the artists and communities who have enriched the Great Lakes region, and those who will build on this work in the years to come. Ellen Alberding, Joyce Foundation President and CEO
About the Joyce Awards
Since its establishment in 2004, the Joyce Awards has had a significant impact on artists and communities across the Great Lakes region. Over the past 20 years, the program has invested nearly $5 million for the creation of 87 new works of visual, performing, and multidisciplinary art. These commissions have engaged Great Lakes communities and amplified the careers of artists of color locally, regionally, and nationwide. The Joyce Awards has supported artists pursuing sustained collaboration with non-profit organizations and communities in and around six Great Lakes cities—Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-Saint Paul—for as long as 24 months, resulting in the production of site-specific and process-driven art works shaped by community input and engagement. The impact of the award extends beyond the grant period, expanding new community-focused programs and capacities for organizations and creating opportunities for artists to deepen and expand their practices. To learn more about the Joyce Awards and see a list of past winners, click here.
About The Joyce Foundation
Joyce is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in evidence-informed public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.