POTRERO NUEVO FUND PRIZE

Potrero Nuevo Fund Prizes were given annually between 1998 and 2003 to projects which used literary, media, performing or visual arts in the service of environmental awareness and change. The goal of this program was to promote awareness of issues concerning the local urban environment through innovative partnerships between artists, arts and/or environmental non-profit organizations and/or local communities.

Eligible projects were community based, produced in collaboration with a local artist, and culminate in a highly accessible public exhibit, literary project or performance. Preference was given to projects which involved historically underserved communities. The Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize sought to reflect the cultural and aesthetic diversity of San Francisco and encouraged applications from people of all backgrounds.

In each year, up to four prizes were given, each a maximum of $12,500, The Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize was administered by New Langton Arts.

The Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize was established in 1998 as a funding source for the production of new, public, environmentally concerned artist led projects. In 2001, the Prize expanded both its scope and criteria to include highly visible projects that raised awareness about both environmental and social issues. Over the course of its six year history, the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize awarded over $200,000 to twenty artist-led projects. These projects included portable gardens, indoor rivers, documentary films, transit posters, and performances occurring across the Bay Area and directly involving communities in West Oakland, Portola, the Mission, on MUNI bus lines, and Japantown respectively.

Numerous projects are still a part of the cultural landscape, screening in and touring through festivals, while others are part of the actual urban terrain including Judy West’s mural on 16th and Harrison streets in San Francisco that marks the location of the subterranean Mission Creek.

Recipients engaged numerous communities and highlighted specific issues that were often ignored or under recognized by people outside, and many times within, the community. Working with a real estate agent, Sergio De La Torre highlighted the expansion and collapse of the housing market of the neighborhoods of West Oakland in The Housing Project (2001). Journalist and filmmaker Janelle Rodriguez exposed the hazardous conditions faced by Mexican workers employed by the environmental clean up industry in her award winning film, White Snow (1998). Writer Pireeni Sundaralingam and musician Colm O’Riain examine the role of "other" in their musical project Interrogating the Foreigner (2003) wherein diverse styles of music and poetry are combined to expose the common bounds between cultures. While each project was directed by one artist, most projects were collaborative in nature, like High Tech Sweat Shop’s (2001) performance trio Los Cybrids, and many of them required the support of an outside organization or venue, as with Valerie Soe’s MUNI project Poetry in Action (1998). This extension of the collaboration brought activist groups, educators, and arts institutions together, expanding the reach of their community service. Like Al Lujan’s video shoot Corn in the Front Yard (2000) which is still screened by tenant’s rights groups in the Mission, many projects continue to develop audiences and raise awareness through social service organizations. The Prize helped to open dialog among artists and audiences, educating the public on issues of environmental, social, and cultural concern. As an artist-run space, New Langton Arts is proud to have been a part of the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize, a program that recognized the value of artist-centered projects and the impact they have on the community. Through the Potrero Nuevo Fund, Langton continued our 15 year history of redistributing funding directly to artists for the production and presentation of new work. This effort began with the Regional Initiative Artist Regranting Program, jointly supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, and the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund/Grants for the Arts. We remain committed to assisting artists in preparing proposals, securing funding, and generating meaningful discourse through its own programs.

James Bewley Program Director August, 2003


STATEMENTS FROM RECIPIENTS

"The Potrero Nuevo grant allowed us to take a much-needed break from our work as a reporter and schoolteacher to focus on making something creative that has a far more lasting political impact on young minds than much political activism. With this grant we finally have an opportunity to express our creative ideas as well as make strong political statements without worrying about time or outside pressure."

–Pratap Chatterjee, 2002 PNFAward Recipient


“It has been an extremely important event for me as an artist, a kind of stepping stone which has taken me, an emerging artist, to the next place and has given me great confidence and gusto to approach the rest of my literary projects.”

–Summi Kaipa, 2002 PNF Award Recipient


“Melissa (Dougherty) and I feel that we have been successful in creating a work that addresses difficult questions about the effects of colonialism and mestizaje on contemporary anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic movements…”

–Gigi Otalvaro Hormillosa, 2002 PNF Award Recipient


“One of the most successful aspects of River In The Hood, I feel, was the way it engaged such a variety of individuals from various cultures, ages, and educational backgrounds. Some twelve hundred people visited the river and about half of them were children. The effect that running water has on the soul cannot be overstated.”

–Gregory Gavin, 1998 PNF Award Recipient


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