Pikes Peak Arts Council

The Pikes Peak Arts Council is a non-profit organization founded in 1968 to honor, connect, and enrich local artists, working to ensure that artists are thriving in, and essential to, the Pikes Peak Region.

Become a member today!

MICROGRANTS

Current Arts Council members, apply here.

PPAC offers monthly and quarterly MicroGrants to member artists to help fund a specific project, achieve an artistic goal, or to offset living/studio expenses. Over $40,000 has been granted to individual artists in our community since the program began in 2009.

Artists who have not yet been awarded a MicroGrant are encouraged to re-submit a new application every six months.

Click here to apply for a PPAC MicroGrant, or first become a member. (This document denotes past awardees.)

July 2017 MicroGrant awardee De Lane Bredvik and PPAC Director Kate Perdoni

2018 MicroGrants

April 2018: Ruthie Markwardt, Director of Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission's Peace Camp

As Director of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission's Peace Camp, Ruthie has worked to develop a summer camp curriculum rooted in music, arts, and social justice. Throughout the week-long program, campers build skills to foster peace within themselves, relationships, their communities, the world, and our planet. This $500 grant will be matched by the PPJPC and will be used to employ two Colorado Springs artists to serve as Art Director and Music Director for the camp. The camp will be held July 30 through August 3, 2018, from 9am-2pm at the Hillside Community Center. Email peacecamp@ppjpc.org for more information or to register!

March 2018: Xanthe Alexis, $200
Musician

Xanthe is a staple of the Pikes Peak music community, drawing from a wealth of traditional influences to create her own arresting and wholly original musical framework. Listen to her tunes here!

February 2018: Noel Black, $200
Author

Noel is a poet, journalist, radio and podcast producer, and a current MFA candidate in poetry and creative non-fiction at Regis University in Denver. His most recent book of poetry, "High Noon," can be ordered here.

January 2018: Audrey Bussanich, $500
Musician

Audrey is earning her Associates Degree in music and piano performance as a Kane scholar at PPCC, and works part-time at KCME Classical Radio. She began training in classical music at age 3, and performs locally in a variety of musical contexts. Learn more about Audrey and her work here.

PPAC MicroGrant Archive

December 2017
Becca Bieda - $200
Photography

An aspiring photographer, Becca is a senior in high school who has taken photography classes for the past three years. This year, she is taking AP photography. Becca is working to expand her portrait portfolio, and will purchase a specific new lens with this PPAC MicroGrant.

November 2017
Robert Gray - $200
Installation/Photography

Robert, a skilled engineer-turned-photographer, has been working on a Visual Arts minor at UCCS. His current photography project is a 35mm film undertaking about growing up in Southern Missouri, where, he says, "emotions were not allowed." The exhibition is scheduled to be unveiled in the old Gazette Building in Colorado Springs with an EDM artist from Brooklyn performing to assist in this "experiment in emotions." Robert will use his MicroGrant toward purchase of materials to support this installation. Check out some of Robert's work here.

October 2017
Conor Bourgal - $200
Musician

Local musician Conor Bourgal is working on new music that will combine his Americana style with an interest in orchestration, particularly string quartets. Inspired by collaborations between the Colorado Symphony and regional musicians like Gregory Alan Isakov, Elephant Revival, and Devotchka, Conor has been working on performance arrangements that accompany his singer/songwriter material. Learn more about Conor's work here and here.

September 2017
Abby Kreuser - $200
Photographer

August 2017
JD Sell - $200
Visual Arts

July 2017
De Lane Bredvik - $500
Architectural/Visual Art

June 2017
Laura BenAmots - $200
Visual Art/Painting

May 2017
Sandra Knauf - $200
Literary Arts

Sandra Knauf is the one-woman-show behind Colorado Springs book and magazine publisher Greenwoman Publishing. She is currently working on her second novel. Sandra writes fiction and non-fiction with themes of gardening and earth stewardship. You can read more about Sandra and her work here.

April 2017
Peach Press - $500
Printing/Visual and Literary Arts

Peach Press is a radical small press dedicated to publishing writers and artists who have been historically marginalized, striving to represent under-published voices and to produce works at low or no cost to artists and authors.

Peyton Davis (right) is an artist/printmaker with a BFA in Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston whose work has been shown in galleries throughout the Boston Metro Area and Colorado Springs, including a recognition from the Boston Printmaking Biennial. Han Sayles (left) is a self-taught printmaker who has led print-based fundraising campaigns for local and national organizations including Inside Out Youth Services and the Audre Lorde Project, often collaborating with the Press at Colorado College and Ladyfingers Letterpress.

March 2017
Roma Ransom - $200
Musicians

Congratulations to March MicroGrant awardees Roma Ransom! Grace and Gordon are working on a new album in 2017. Their previous EPs, recorded in Minneapolis and mixed and mastered by Emmy Award winning producer Taylor Lewin, have earned the duo recognition through the COMBO singer-songwriter awards. We are pleased to have Roma Ransom performing March 21 at the Pikes Peak Arts Council 2017 Spring Member Mixer -- please join us there! In the meantime, you can listen at https://romaransom.bandcamp.com/

February 2017
Katherine Colvin - $200
Photographer

January 2017
Nico Wilkinson, Idris Goodwin and Han Sayles - $500
Poets and Printmakers of Inauguration

Local spoken word performance poets Idris Goodwin and Nico Wilkinson along with printing press publisher and artist Han Sayles were awarded a $500 Pikes Peak Arts Council MicroGrant for their poetry book "Inauguration." Idris and Nico will use these funds to help support their current speaking tour throughout Colorado and New Mexico, and to help offset printing costs. Congratulations, and thank you for representing Colorado Springs as you travel with this beautiful work!

2016 MicroGrants

December 2016
Cocordion - $200
Musician