The City of West Hollywood has announced the recipients for its 2025 Arts Grant Program, totaling $252,000 awarded to 28 new grantees and 9 multi-year grantees who are all Los Angeles County-based non-profit arts organizations and artists.

The City of West Hollywood, through its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission, has maintained an Arts Grant Program since 1997. The Program provides funding support to eligible artists and nonprofit arts organizations for the production, performance, or presentation of arts projects that take place in the City of West Hollywood and that serve the West Hollywood community.

The City received a total of 62 applications representing a variety of arts disciplines and a wide array of projects. Following peer panel reviews and the Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission funding recommendations, the West Hollywood City Council approved the below recommendations at its regular meeting on Monday, November 4, 2024.

The Arts Project Grant category supports the production, performance, or presentation of art projects that take place in the City of West Hollywood and that serve the West Hollywood community. It is a two-year grant. The following non-profit arts organizations are grant recipients for 2025-2026: Arts Bridging the Gap, Invertigo Dance Theatre, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Synchromy, and Women’s Voices Now.

The Transgender, Gender Diverse, Intersex Arts Grant category supports and enhances the presentation of artworks in West Hollywood by transgender artists, artist collectives or groups, and non-profit organizations with a history of supporting transgender artists. First initiated in 2013, this grant category is the first to support artwork by, for, and about the transgender community. The 2025 grant recipients in this category are: Samara Goodman, Umi Hsu, Ryan Kiernan, Queen Angelina, and Yozmit The DogStar.

The Community Arts Grant intends to support non-profit arts organizations with a history of supporting Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities, LGB communities and/or female artists and audiences. The grant recipients in this category include: Susan Elaine Cole, Steve Galindo, Shenandoah Harris, Summer Jade Leavitt, Nose Wiggle Productions, Inc., Don C Tinling, and Mylove West.

The WeHo Artist Grant aims to nurture and support the long-term development of an artist’s ideas by providing funds that increase the capacity for artists to realize work, advance the conditions of creation, and navigate the complexities of both making art and making a career. The West Hollywood resident artist grant recipients for 2025 are: Christian Cintron, Fritzwa, Megan Mueller, and Philip Marc Tarley.

The 40^th Anniversary Cultural History Grant, is a category specific to 2025, meant to highlight and celebrate the City’s of West Hollywood’s 40^th year of cityhood. Projects will highlight the history of West Hollywood and explore the people, policies, and stories that make West Hollywood a unique and vibrant community through the genre of a cultural history exhibition or activity, film screening, panel discussion, or walking tour. The 40^th Anniversary Cultural History Grant recipients are: Dante Alencastre, Arts Bridging the Gap, Samara Goodman, Jason Jenn, Crystal Lake, Kultur Mercado, and the ONE Archives Foundation.

In addition to these new grant awardees, the City continues to support its multi-year grantees in their second year of programming. The multi-year grantees are: Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, Greenway Arts Alliance, Inc., Helix Collective, Kol Sephardic Choir (ROSE), No Easy Props, Inc., One Institute (ONE Archives Foundation), Prism Comics, Inc., Rogue Artists Ensemble, and Vox Femina Los Angeles.

The Arts Grant Program is considered a central component to arts and cultural programs and services provided by the City of West Hollywood. Arts grants offer subsidized funding to artists and organizations in order to make ticket prices free or low cost for the public. In other cases, art grants provide opportunities for artistic development, allowing space for stimulating creativity and deepening cross-cultural understanding, while contributing to the quality-of-life residents and visitors can enjoy in West Hollywood. The funding provided through the vehicle of a grant ensures a fair and equitable review process and results in the reflection of the diversity contained among the City’s residents.

The City of West Hollywood is committed to providing accessible arts programming for residents and visitors. The City delivers a broad array of arts programs through its Arts Division including Art on the Outside (temporary public art), Arts Grants for Artists and Nonprofit Arts Organizations, City Poet Laureate Program, Drag Laureate Program, Free Theatre in the Parks, Human Rights Speakers Series, Library Exhibits and Programming, Summer Sounds/Winter Sounds, Urban Art Program (permanent public art), WeHo Reads, and the WeHo Pride Arts Festival.

For additional information about the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Grant Program, please visit www.weho.org/arts.

For more information, please contact Eva Angeloff, Grants Coordinator in the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division, at (323) 848-6354 or at eangeloff@weho.org. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, please call TTY (323) 848-6496.

For up-to-date information about City of West Hollywood news and events, follow @wehocity on social media, sign-up for news updates at www.weho.org/email, and visit the City’s calendar of meetings and events at www.weho.org/calendar. City Hall services are accessible by phone at (323) 848-6400 and via website at www.weho.org. Sign up for the City’s text message program by texting “WeHo” to (323) 848-5000.

For reporters and members of the media seeking additional information about the City of West Hollywood, please contact the City of West Hollywood’s Public Information Officer, Sheri A. Lunn, at (323) 848-6391 or slunn@weho.org.