Brooklyn Arts Council has been providing Community Arts Grants to Brooklyn’s artists, cultural ambassadors, arts organizations, and communities for almost 40 years, putting city and state cultural dollars directly into the hands of the artists and organizations. In our Grantee Spotlight series, we’re highlighting some of those artists and groups who contribute so much to the cultural vitality of Brooklyn.
Credit: Victoria Sin, Film still from Part Four/Cthulhu Through the Looking Glass, 2017.
Organization: Apogee Journal
Apogee is an art and literary journal whose mission is to provide a platform for underrepresented voices, engaging identity politics and activism in works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. This spring, Apogee’s Writing Resistance workshop series offered affordable and inclusive classes taught by Apogee editors and contributors, and just last week the journal published its eleventh issue. Read on for more about how Apogee used their BAC grant, challenges they currently face, and where they turn for inspiration.
What has your BAC grant helped you accomplish?
Apogee Journal is committed to keeping writing relevant and accessible. Our BAC grant helped us to put our beliefs into practice, to grow our literary community, and to provide space, time, and some creative nourishment to NYC writers.
How have you grown from your first BAC grant? In what ways is Apogee a different organization now?
The Writing Resistance workshops have very much changed our organization. Many of the participants from the workshops have joined Apogee’s team, or sent us work during our reading periods. The workshops have expanded Apogee beyond the journal page and into the world of NYC writers. We love the workshops so much that they’ve become a part of our annual programming, which we hope to continue for many years to come.
