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Schuylkill Center to receive $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for LandLab Artist Residency

PHILADELPHIA�National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $30 million in grants as part of the NEA�s first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017. Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $20,000 to the Schuylkill Center for the LandLab Artist Residency, which combines art and science in an artist-in-residence program. The NEA grant category, Art Works, focuses on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts.

"The arts are for all of us, and by supporting organizations such as the Schuylkill Center, the National Endowment for the Arts is providing more opportunities for the public to engage with the arts," said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. "Whether in a theater, a town square, a museum, or a hospital, the arts are everywhere and make our lives richer."

The Schuylkill Center�s LandLab Residency blends art and environmental science to engage multigenerational Philadelphia audiences in innovative solutions to environmental problems. Visual artists receive professional development and collaborate with scientists to create new, site-specific, outdoor artworks, each intervening with a local ecological issue. A joint project of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, LandLab offers resources and space on the Center�s 365-acre wooded property for visual artists to engage audiences in ecological stewardship, scientific investigation, and artistic creation. LandLab projects result in innovative, art-based installations that prevent or remediate environmental damage while raising public awareness about our local ecology.

The LandLab residency was offered for the first time in 2014-2015 to seven Philadelphia artists working on four critical ecological issues, including stormwater, invasive vines, declining wild pollinator populations, and invasive earthworms. We are thrilled to provide continued opportunities for artists to use our site as living laboratory in this unique residency.

For LandLab 2017-2018, six-month to year-long artist residencies will grant three artists or artist teams the resources and space on the Schuylkill Center�s open-to-the-public property to create three new contemporary, site-specific, outdoor artworks, developed in collaboration with ecology experts to address an ecological issue on the Schuylkill Center site. Applications will open in January 2017, and information sessions will be held both at the Schuylkill Center and the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in early 2017.

About the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
The Schuylkill Center was founded in 1965 as the nation�s first urban environmental education center. Its 365-acres of fields and forests serve as a living laboratory to foster appreciation, deepen understanding, and encourage stewardship of the environment. Reaching over 36,000 Philadelphia-area residents each year, the Schuylkill Center offers a diverse collection of educational programs, including programs for school, continuing education for teachers, Pennsylvania�s first Nature Preschool, and a full calendar of events for the public. For more information: www.schuylkillcenter.org.