West Virginia: Full STEAM Ahead Grants

Innovative ideas may come easily to artists, educators and arts organizations, but funding opportunities to realize them can be more elusive. In West Virginia, this dilemma spawned a unique collaboration to create the Full STEAM Ahead grant program. Through it, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts (WVCA), the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the Beckley Area Foundation (BAF) are awarding grants of up to $5,000 to projects that use art to teach STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) content areas. The partnership between the agency and the foundations is based on the mutual goal of helping K-12, higher education and nonprofit-affiliated teachers leverage the power of arts integration in their classrooms. The partners’ interest in STEAM (STEM + art) education grew into a replicable pilot program through the networking and leadership of WVCA’s chair, Susan Landis, who also is the executive director of BAF, a community foundation, and who has worked with James V. Denova, vice president of the private Benedum Foundation. Recognizing an opportunity for collective impact, the Benedum Foundation awarded $150,000 to BAF for the two-year pilot, which WVCA agreed to facilitate by assisting with the grant application and review processes. For more information, contact WVCA Arts in Education Coordinator Jim Wolfe.