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entertainment1d ago
Chicago’s cultural department launches new grant progam aimed at helping emerging theater companies
- Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs launched Next Stage Chicago, a $400,000 grant program for emerging theater companies.
- The program will award up to $50,000 to as many as eight nonprofits building audiences and infrastructure.
- Grants require nonprofits to have budgets of $500,000 or less and at least three but no more than ten years in operation.
- The grants can be used for organizational management, marketing, and audience development.
- Next Stage Chicago is funded in part by a Pritzker Foundation grant.
- Recipients will be chosen from Chicago’s robust storefront theater scene that has faced pandemic-related audience declines.
- Applications for Next Stage Chicago are open and close July 8, with decisions in September.
- Cultural Commissioner Kenya Merritt frames the initiative as essential to Chicago’s neighborhoods.
- DCASE has a history of grantmaking, supporting hundreds of recipients in 2025.
- The next Stage Chicago program is part of a broader arts funding strategy in the city.
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