Ridgelines Language Arts Awarded $10,000 NEA Grant

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded Centre County nonprofit Ridgelines Language Arts a $10,000 grant to bolster its literary arts programs.

Ridgelines programs funded by the Challenge America award take place in partnership with local social service organizations and serve older adults living with physical and/or cognitive disabilities; women-identifying and non-binary writers; low-income youth; people living with memory loss; and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Ridgelines programming is among 168 projects nationwide selected to receive a total of $1.68 million in Challenge America grant funding through fiscal year 2022.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects like this one from Ridgelines that help support the community’s creative economy,” NEA Acting Chair Ann Eilers said in a statement. “Ridgelines is among the organizations nationwide that are using the arts as a source of strength, a path to well-being, and providing access and opportunity for people to connect and find joy through the arts.”

The five Ridgelines programs funded in part by the NEA Challenge America award include:

• “Being Heard” and “A Poem in Our Eyes,” two poetry programs taught by Ridgelines teaching artists at Centre Care nursing facility for low-income seniors. “Being Heard,” Ridgelines’ longest running program, was selected by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts as one of four “Best of the Best” projects in the commonwealth from among 1,175 projects between 2013-2016.

• “Write Outside,” serving low-income youth in collaboration with Bellefonte Youth Services.

• “Roots and Blooms,” Ridgelines’ program serving women-identifying and non-binary writers, which is comprised of a series of workshops and public readings with both nationally renowned and local poets and writers, as well as open mics lifting up the voices of new writers, poets, songwriters and storytellers.

• “Mindfulness Writing at Centre Safe” for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and for the people who support them.

“Ridgelines is honored to receive the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America award,” Ridgelines Board President Katie O’Hara-Krebs said. “The funding supports the Ridgelines mission to grow and cultivate creative opportunities for underserved populations in our communities.”

In addition to the NEA grant, Ridgelines also began 2022 with a renewed Program Stream Grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, as well as a seed grant from the Centre Foundation’s J. Alvin and Vera E. Knepper Hawbaker Memorial Endowment Fund.

The latter will help us to launch “Stories from Inside,” a new storytelling program set to begin this year for women who are incarcerated in Centre County.