TheatreSquared Awarded $100K Grant From National Endowment for the Arts

TheatreSquared, a professional regional theatre founded in 2005 and a resident company of Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center, has been awarded a $100,000 grant by National Endowment for the Arts.

The award, part of the NEA’s Our Town initiative that supports creative placemaking in American communities, will help TheatreSquared explore its long-term role as an arts-based contributor to the downtown entertainment district and within Fayetteville’s 2025 City Plan.

“Our founding vision states that theatre, done well and with passion, can transform lives and communities,” said TheatreSquared executive director Martin Miller. “This major grant will help us to advance that vision as an integral part of our town and home region.”

There were 69 grantees chosen from nearly 300 applicants, according to a news release.

TheatreSquared also released late last year its Vision 2017 report, created together with a panel of community leaders to set the theatre’s three-year priorities for growth. The goals are supported by a three-year, $1.03 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation.

“Over the past years, Northwest Arkansas’s regional theatre has been one of the nation’s fastest growing companies,” Miller said. “We are proud that, in just five years’ time, our annual budget to create professional theatre and arts-in-education has grown from under $200,000 to over $1.3 million, with attendance growing tenfold over the same period.

“We are thrilled to be able to seize this momentum and, with leadership support from the Walton Family Foundation, accelerate TheatreSquared’s emergence as a significant professional theatre at the center of the country.”