In The News

Pittsburgh is on the fast track to a 21st-century renaissance. “Most of our foundations have bylaws that mandate they do most of their giving here in Pittsburgh,” says Bill Flanagan, chief corporate relations officer for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. “We get the full benefit of an incredible concentration of assets.”

 “There’s so much great work happening here,” says Germaine Williams, senior program officer for arts and education at The Pittsburgh Foundation. “To be able to support the level of activity that’s happening—and it’s African-American artists and it’s African artists and artists from around the world coming to Pittsburgh—is a great thing.” 

The foundation-backed Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh program is doling out about $205,000 in grants to 13 artists and arts groups for projects spanning dance, film, music, multimedia and other mediums.

The Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants program, a partnership between The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments, has awarded $204,480 in grants to support art rooted in the black experience. Since its inception in 2010, the program has invested $3.7 million to support the elimination of racial disparities within the arts sector. Of 58 submissions, 13 were funded this cycle.

Funded by the Pittsburgh Foundation, Penn Hills Jobs First employees will serve as part-time workers (20 hours per week, 500 hours total) who will tackle various aspects of home repair, including drywall, painting, flooring, landscaping, windows and doors, demolition and energy modifications. The jobs pay $8 per hour.

“It's really important to have an on-time budget that invests in services in the state,” said Samantha Balbier, executive director of the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership. Human services will not receive increases, but at least nonprofit agencies know the outcome and can move forward, she said. Kate Dewey of the Forbes Fund, the nonprofit arm of the Pittsburgh Foundation, called an on-time budget “extraordinarily important.” “Last year created such havoc,” she said.

This portion of the re-do will cost $305,000 and is supported by the Heinz Endowments, National Endowment for the Arts, Pittsburgh Foundation, and Allegheny County Infrastructure and Tourism Funds through the Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County and Senator Wayne Fontana.

The August Wilson Center for African American Culture will soon move away from mostly being a rental space operated by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. A $300,000 AWC Programming Fund has been launched in the past two years to support local artists’ projects at the center and to aid the resurrection.

The ongoing resurrection of the AWC, a two-story, 63,200 square-foot venue at the edge of the Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District, is moving at a “deliberate” pace said, Max King, Pittsburgh Foundation president and CEO. Its current status is largely as a rental facility being operated and programmed by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.  

Tracey McCants Lewis, an assistant clinical professor at the Duquesne University School of Law, has been named to a three-year term on the board of the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh. A 2005 recipient of Pittsburgh Magazine’s "40 Under 40 Award" and the New Pittsburgh Courier’s "Fabulous 40" award, McCants Lewis teaches in Duquesne’s Civil Rights Clinic and Unemployment Compensation Clinic, where her research focuses on critical race theory, feminist legal theory, legal storytelling in clinical legal education, and re-entry justice.