2022 GIA Conference

Converge/Transform

Grantmakers in the Arts welcomes you back to NYC — occupied Munsee Lenape, Wappinger, Canarsie, Lekawe, and Matinecock lands and hometown to GIA since 2018 — for our annual conference! Since we’ve gathered last, we’ve witnessed the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, demands for justice for Black lives, and a history of racial inequity that remains unreconciled.

As we prepare to gather again, after quite some time, we attend to the needs of our home communities and consider what each of us can bring to the conference in support of each other. As this city reminds us, we find ourselves between creativity and tension, creation and extraction, forward-looking ideas of liberation and past-connecting ideas of relation, stewardship, and interdependence. In this moment, we are asking: What do we need? And, what do creative communities need? How are we, as stewards of wealth and holders of power, using our imaginations to build a present and future that will redress past and present struggle?

The unprecedented pandemic-era reverberations have taken tolls on all of us, on our health and environment, on our tolerance and capacity for uncertainty. We believe the vibrance and creativity of NYC keeps us feeling, dreaming, fighting for new futures. What can we make possible by gathering, attending to both grief and joy, and committed to moving forward together?

Join us October 6-12 as we reunite to reimagine the present and the future of arts and culture.