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Boise Contemporary Theater receives grants for 2025

Arts Boise

Updated: Jan 15


Image of five stage lights, colored silver, hanging from a beam

Boise Contemporary Theater, Boise's professional, nonprofit contemporary theater company founded in 1997, recently announced two grants they received for 2025.


The first is for its Setting the Stage Capital Campaign. In effort to upgrade the Fulton Street facility, key projects in this campaign include: new modular flexible seating, enhanced classroom and production spaces, exterior upgrade, and the new Ghost Light Pub (a gathering space on 9th and Fulton).


From the press release:


Boise Contemporary Theater (BCT) is excited to announce it has been awarded a $15,000 grant from The Bews Foundation for renovations as part of BCT’s Setting the Stage Capital Campaign to fund critical upgrades to the BCT facility and lay the foundation for the next 25 years and beyond as BCT looks to grow and diversify how they serve the ever-increasing Boise metropolitan community.


The Bews Foundation is a local organization that supports charities and nonprofits primarily in the Treasure Valley whose missions cover a variety of purposes, such as community enhancement, education, and promotion of the arts.


“We are overjoyed with this support from The Bews Foundation as a local collaborator in enhancing the Treasure Valley community through the arts,” added BCT's Managing Director, Emily Mahon.


Boise Contemporary Theater BIPOC Festival


The second recent grant was awarded for BCT's ever-growing annual BIPOC Playwrights Festival, founded in 2021 with assistance from the Idaho Women’s Charitable Foundation. This festival gives emerging and mid-career playwrights of color the chance to workshop their script during this weeklong festival with a director and full cast.


From the press release:


Boise Contemporary Theater (BCT) is grateful to be approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $25,000. This grant will support BCT’s 5th Annual BIPOC Playwrights Festival to be held in August of 2025. In total, the NEA will award 1,127 Grants for Arts Projects awards nationwide totaling more than $31.8 million as part of the recent announcement of fiscal year 2025 grants.


“The NEA is proud to continue our nearly 60 years of supporting the efforts of organizations and artists that help to shape our country’s vibrant arts sector and communities of all types across our nation,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “It is inspiring to see the wide range of creative projects taking place, including Boise Contemporary Theater’s Fifth Annual BIPOC Playwrights Festival.”


BCT's Producing Artistic Director, Benjamin Burdick, added, “We at BCT are so appreciative of the NEA's continued support of our Annual BIPOC Playwrights Festival. This level of support is critical to the continued growth and success of the important work done at our Festival every year by artists from across the nation. Thanks to the NEA Grants for Arts Project award, BCT looks forward to hosting new playwrights and artists so they can tell their stories here.”

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