Cultural Investment Funding Program Awardees 2025-2026

CCA is partnering with ArtBridge/ArtStorming to convene arts leaders from around Santa Fe and northern New Mexico to address the critical need for community mobilization, partnerships and collaboration in these extremely challenging and tumultuous times. Through a series of panel discussions, brainstorming sessions, and teambuilding exercises, CCA and ArtBridge will identify needs in the community, resource opportunities, and community partners. "Collaboration Lab" will work to literally connect and match participants for community-based initiatives, performances and other artistic collaborations. Funding supports the promotion of this collaboration project, creative resources, and bringing the community together in connection.

Website: ccasantafe.org
 

Funding supports marketing for the 2025 Indigenous Ways Festival, a dynamic, multi-day cultural celebration featuring events on August 15 and September 27–28. IW is actively collaborating with the Santa Fe Recovery Center to co-host a Sober PowWow, creating a safe and sober space to honor Indigenous identity and healing. In partnership with the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and the New Mexico School for the Deaf (NMSD), the festival showcases an inspiring array of music, dance, storytelling, and wellness workshops. By blending in-person and digital storytelling, this initiative enriches Santa Fe’s cultural tourism while amplifying Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+, and Deaf voices. Rooted in tradition and resilience, the festival fosters inclusive, intergenerational engagement for all.

Website: indigenousways.org
 

Funding helps to support the marketing for collaborative community events with Midtown Arts and Design Alliance (MADA) partners. SFAI continues a series of public events to activate the site and foster broad community engagement. These events will serve as a catalyst for connection between partner organizations and their constituents, particularly engaging adjacent and historically underserved neighborhoods. This collaborative cohort is equally dedicated to these goals, ensuring inclusive participation and meaningful impact. MADA is a coalition of arts, design, service, and educational organizations united by a shared vision: to co-locate at the Midtown campus and co-create equitable, accessible spaces and programs.

Website: sfai.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of Entrapping Our Abundance, a social circus performance project of Wise Fool New Mexico (WFNM) that will explore the environmental injustices facing communities in the Southwest, while celebrating and uplifting the wealth of cultural and natural resources in New Mexico. Wise Fool’s co-executive directors, a show director, a production team and performers will be involved in a two-month process of co-creating Entrapping Our Abundance. Performers for Entrapping Our Abundance will feature the ensemble of WFNM, coming from Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and other regions of New Mexico. WFNM will collaborate with Earth Care and YUCCA to offer workshops on environmental, economic, and racial justice, as well as to consult on the artistic process.

Website: wisefoolnewmexico.org
 

Funding supports the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet with their local Santa Fe-based programs including dance performances by extraordinary professional dance companies, their dance school that provides year-round classes for Santa Fe based children, and Folklórico, a Mexican folkloric dance program for local youth.

Website: aspensantafeballet.com
 

Funding supports El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, New Mexico's Premier Living History Museum, 2025/26 programming, including promotion of daily regular admission, seven festival weekends, three winter lectures and various other special tours, events and programming throughout their season. Celebrating their 53rd year in Santa Fe's La Cienega Valley, LG continues to be the largest nonprofit provider of educational programming for children in Santa Fe County.

Website: golondrinas.org
 

Funding elevates the promotion of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and their programming impact and expands access to free programs, including First Fridays and Family Days. The Museum engages the community with vibrant and immersive exhibitions that celebrate the art, life, and spirit of Georgia O’Keeffe, framing her story withing the broader conversations around humanities, history, and place. In 2025-2026, the Museum will debut a landmark exhibition: Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country: Tewa Interpretations of “O’Keeffe Country”, developed in collaboration with renowned artist Jason Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo).

Website: okeeffemuseum.org
 

Funding supports IAIA with seven uncommon and exceptional exhibits of Indigenous art from the USA and Taiwan: 1) Dr. Suzanne Kite’s Dreaming with AI, 2) Art & Activism in Indigenous Taiwan with contemporary Indigenous artists from Taiwan; 3) Douglas Miles: Resilience in Motion draws connections between skateboarding and the Apache warrior tradition; 4) Maggie Thompson: Bold Stitches; 5) Paper Trails: Unfolding Indigenous Narratives; 6) Stella Nall: Beyond Shadows; 7) Ken Fury and Gary Medina Cook: The Genizaro Experience.

Website: iaia.edu
 

Funding supports the promotion of the International Folk Art Market (IFAM) celebrating the 21st annual July Market. IFAM will continue to expand opportunities for folk artists, creating cross-cultural connections for visitors, as well as driving more tourism to Santa Fe. Building on this momentum, they aim to offer robust programming, including the night market, concerts, and IFAM Connections workshops.

Website: folkartmarket.org
 

Funding supports Lensic Presents through promoting nearly thirty annual events showcasing artists from local, national and international backgrounds. This diverse, high caliber performing arts series features music, dance, theater, and film, including family events, the Met Live in HD, and London’s National Theatre Live in HD. This initiative underscores Lensic’s commitment to supporting the local performing arts community and enriching the cultural experience for Santa Fe residents.

Website: lensic.org
 

Funding supports the Museum of New Mexico Foundation’s marketing of Santa Fe’s museum culture, inviting audiences to experience the programs, exhibitions and events at several of Santa Fe’s outstanding museums. The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture is a premier repository of Native American art and culture. The Museum of International Folk Art facilitates opportunities for visitors to connect with the rich artistic, cultural, and folk traditions of people from across the world. The New Mexico History Museum serves a wide constituency of citizens and visitors, with several aspects of New Mexico’s history inflecting alongside world history. The New Mexico Museum of Art makes art accessible to everyone, and the Vladem Contemporary presents bold contemporary work of the Southwest.

Website: museumfoundation.org
 

Funding will support NDI New Mexico to publicize their award-winning dance programs, performances, and opportunities for teachers during the 2025-2026 year. NDI New Mexico provides opportunities to underserved students within the city of Santa Fe and the state of New Mexico as a whole, providing world-class performing arts training. Programs like Spring into Motion provide the facilities, instructors, and resources needed for children to learn how to express themselves through dance.

Website: ndi-nm.org
 

Funding supports the marketing for the Art Institute’s season of events, approximately 10-12 performances, exhibitions, outreach and development events throughout the school year that are open to the public. Students will present performances and exhibitions in one of five disciplines, including Creative Writing & Literature, Dance, Music, Theater, and Visual Arts. Performances generally occur at the downtown NMSA campus or other local venues, including the Jean Cocteau Cinema, the Lensic, etc.

Website: nmschoolforthearts.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s 52nd Season from July 13 - August 18, 2025, with six weeks of concerts in Santa Fe. Reflecting the excellence in performance quality and creativity in programming for which the festival has become renowned, the season will offer more than 40 concerts, by nearly 100 world class musicians for an audience of residents and visitors.

Website: santafechambermusic.org
 

Funding supports marketing for SITE Santa Fe’s 2025-2026 Season. SITE will present exhibitions of contemporary art, notably their 12th International, which features 70 local, national, and international artists, and Indian Theater, with more than 40 artists. Additional projects include Young Curators, the PRAXIS Program, and public programs that accompany each exhibition.

Website: sitesantafe.org
 

Funding supports the marketing for the 2026 Opera Season, featuring 36 performances of five operas. Additionally, the season includes a fully staged evening of Apprentice Scenes and an Apprentice Concert, conducted by Ivan Lopez Reynoso and featuring the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, showcasing the exceptional vocal artistry of the company’s singing apprentices.

Website: santafeopera.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of The Santa Fe Symphony’s (SFS) 42nd season from September 2025 – May 2026. The 42nd season includes 12 orchestra and chorus concerts at the Lensic, three choral and chamber ensemble concerts at the Cathedral, and more than 20 free chamber music concerts across Santa Fe. SFS will continue to offer outstanding classical music from a diverse array of soloists and composers, fostering an appealing and accessible musical environment for the community.

Website: santafesymphony.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of the annual Review Santa Fe Photo Symposium. The annual Symposium brings together a global network of 100 selected lens-based artists and up to 50 representatives from museums, galleries, book publishers, and media outlets. The programs include project presentations, an exhibition, a portfolio walk, and more. The internationally renowned photography conference has attracted a worldwide audience to Santa Fe for 24 years.

Website: centersantafe.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of PechaKucha Night. PechaKucha Night (PKN) Santa Fe is part of a global network spanning 1,300+ cities, celebrating creativity, storytelling, and cultural exchange. Held quarterly at SITE Santa Fe, PKN follows the 20x20 format—20 slides advancing every 20 seconds—spotlighting local creatives and changemakers. With 200+ attendees per event, which is free to the public, PKN fosters community engagement and tourism. Through the PechaKucha Story Exchange, Santa Fe’s stories reach a global audience, showcasing the region’s rich creative culture.

Website: creativesantafe.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of the 2025-2026 season of ensemble performances. The Exodus Ensemble's 2025 season, running from May 8 to December 15, will feature 100 performances across five original immersive experiences. The season includes the premieres of Exodus' CYRANO as well as a brand-new outdoor Western experience developed in collaboration with DD Ranch. Additionally, the season will feature remounts of HAMLET and BATHSHEBA, as well as a monthly series of improv shows. All performances operate on a donation model and are free to anyone who needs them to be.

Website: exodusensemble.com

The Santa Fe Children’s Museum will host programs introducing children ages 0-8 to various artistic mediums through their Fine Art Friday initiative and outdoor performance series. Art activities cover diverse mediums with an emphasis on the arts of Northern New Mexico. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: santafechildrensmuseum.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of the 17th annual film festival. The 17th annual SFiFF, presented by the Santa Fe Film Institute. SFiFF will take place October 15-20, 2025, with screenings of more than150 new films, filmmaker discussions, industry panels and workshops, and other film-focused events. SFiFF’s film programs will include International films, American independents, New Mexico films, Green Earth films, and the world-renowned Indigenous Film program.

Website: santafe.film
 

Funding supports the promotion of the literary festival, which connects writers, readers, and thinkers—from around the world and close to home—in the celebration of words and story, providing space for meaningful conversations and shared experiences that create community and strengthen social ties across diverse groups. Building on the city and state’s rich history of storytelling, SFILF is the only annual local celebration dedicated to the literary arts.

Website: sfinternationallitfest.org
 

The Santa Fe Playhouse produces six to seven live productions over the course of their Season. The funding supports the promotion of the second half of the 2025 Season for the productions of Something Rotten, Pueblo Revolt, The Melodrama, and Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy.

Website: santafeplayhouse.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of Santa Fe Pro Musica’s 2025–26 season of classical music experiences. These performances are offered during Santa Fe’s off-season (fall-winter-spring) and include four distinct concert series—the orchestra series with international guest artists, the string quartet series featuring the world’s top quartets, the Southwest’s premier Bach Festival, and the youth concert series for the students of Northern New Mexico.

Website: sfpromusica.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale 2025 Summer and Winter Festivals. The Summer Festival offers patrons multiple, varied musical programs over the course of three weeks, encouraging visitors to make an extended stay in Santa Fe. The Winter Festival has become a destination tradition that visitors plan their holidays around.

Website: desertchorale.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of programming connected to the Burning of Zozobra, a unique cultural event staged annually by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe in Zozobra Field at Fort Marcy Park on Labor Day Friday. Having triumphantly completed the 10-year Zozobra Decades project and a record-breaking 2024 Zozobra Centennial, 2025 will launch the next century of releasing the gloom for the Santa Fe community and visitors in an artistic visit to the past and future, honoring heritage and legacy, via a colorful, festive steampunk theme.

Website: burnzozbra.com
 

Axle will host a series of exhibitions and performances of contemporary artworks from New Mexico-based artists. These projects take the form of installation, new media arts, performance, social engagement projects, and exhibitions of visual artworks. These projects are presented through the Axle Contemporary Mobile Artspace on the streets, in parking lots, and in other unusual or unexpected locations throughout Santa Fe, reaching a wide and diverse audience. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: www.axleart.com
 

Incite Shakespeare Company has achieved its mission of presenting excellent productions of Shakespeare's plays in Santa Fe every July for the past ten years. In July 2025, enjoy two productions by William Shakespeare, Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and their continued informal program, BAR(d), in which multiple readings of Shakespeare's plays are given year-round in local bars and restaurants. Funding supports the promotion of programming

Website: iscsantafe.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of an event to take place November 15, 2025, wherein Little Globe, Lensic and Santa Fe Indigenous Center are co-producing an evening at the Lensic Performing Arts Center featuring an evening of films, movement and dance, spoken word and ensemble pieces, all of which tell the diverse stories from this town’s Indigenous residents who call Santa Fe home. This is a celebration of, by and for the local Indigenous community, with the goal of sharing their stories with the larger community to help them better understand Santa Fe’s 11,000 diverse Native residents. This event explores a wide range of topics including history, culture, modern life, identity, inequity, and pride in being Native in this town.

Website: littleglobe.org

The NMPAS 2025-2026 season includes concerts and educational youth outreach programs. There will be three major series concerts, with one performance each in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, several chamber concerts, and two to three educational outreach events in schools in Santa Fe and other cities in which we perform. A new opera project with the John Donald Rob Musical Trust at UNM is also starting in 2025-2026. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: nmpas.org
 

2026 will be the17th year Parallel Studios has produced CURRENTS, an annual international new media festival. Over the years, what began as a small local exhibition has grown into an event that is recognized worldwide as one of the premier celebrations of art and technology. The CURRENTS festival brings together artists, programmers and technicians from New Mexico, the US, and around the world. Funding supports the promotion of the program.

Website: currentsnewmedia.org
 

Santa Fe Classic Theater presents full-length plays and readings of classic theater, from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Shaw, in Santa Fe. The season for 2025- 2026 will include summer Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward, Tom Stoppard, and one of several classic plays as the winter production. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: santafeclassictheater.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of programming of the 9th annual Santa Fe Traditional Music Festival (Santa Fe TradFest), a three-day event held August 22- 24, 2025, at Bishop's Ridge/Camp Stoney, a wooded site on the original Santa Fe Trail, ten miles from downtown Santa Fe. The Santa Fe TradFest presents concerts, workshops, jam sessions, children's programs, and other activities, featuring music from diverse cultural traditions, including bluegrass, old-time, Hispanic New Mexican, Native American, cowboy, Cajun, blues, Celtic, and other genres.

Website: santafetradfest.org
 

Funding supports the promotion of Improv4Schools, a multi-week, free improv program for school students in Northern New Mexico. We enter schools and teach youth improv in their classrooms. After, we invite students to showcase their learning at the close of each semester and continue their improv education at our black box theater after school, free of charge, where they meet students from other public schools and backgrounds. Improv develops skills such as teamwork and communication, while reducing anxiety.

Website: santafeimprov.org
 

The annual Santa Fe Studio Tour, now in its 17th year, is a fixture in the Santa Fe art experience. From a grassroots arts organization, it has now evolved into a two-weekend city-wide event of open studios and artist-driven workshops attracting a large regional and out-of-state audience. The Tour highlights our diverse neighborhoods and creative environments where local artists work and live. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: santafeartstudio.com
 

Funding supports the promotion of Spanish Danzart Society, which presents Antonio Granjero + Entreflamenco’s production 2025-2026 season, totaling 131 performances. Their objective is to ensure quality cultural experiences and opportunities to enrich the everyday lives of Santa Fe’s community, both young and old, while also entertaining visiting patrons, and creating sustainability for the arts moving towards the future. Spanish Danzart Society inspires community engagement through sharing our diverse cultural heritage by preserving the art of flamenco as an important part of the cultural fabric of our community.

Website: entreflamenco.com
 

Teatro Paraguas will present three contemporary award-winning Latinx plays, two community celebrations (El Día de los Muertos on Santa Fe Plaza in collaboration with Kiwanis Club and City of Santa Fe, and the 13th annual A Musical Piñata for Christmas), two Umbrella Children's Theatre productions, and various poetry and play readings throughout the year. Funding supports promotion.

Website: teatroparaguas.org
 

Short Shorts (working title), a new collection of original short theatrical works, will culminate in 12 public performances followed by 12 facilitated post-show talkbacks, fostering audience engagement and dialogue. Funding will also support three adult master classes (approximately eight hours each) and four youth workshops (approximately two hours each), expanding Theater Grottesco’s educational programming. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: theatergrottesco.org
 

Funding helps promotion of Theatre Santa Fe's programming that supports all member theater groups in Santa Fe, assists with all publicity and marketing, and presents festivals and events featuring Santa Fe theaters and educating our youth in theater arts. Through its committee, Theatre Lovers Club, it provides year-round programming and outreach about Santa Fe theater production. Its operations cover every aspect of theater in Santa Fe. Theatre Santa Fe, with its more than 20 member theaters, serves the mission of providing a coordinating web site and activities to provide critical infrastructure for those theater companies. It is the information clearing house for plays, readings, auditions, support groups, theater jobs, community infrastructure, and much more.

Website: theatresantafe.org
 

The 2025 season will comprise five fully staged productions, one of which is a premiere of a new work by local playwright Dale Dunn. Funding supports promotion of programming as well as goals of making theater more accessible to the community.

Website: nmactorslab.com
 

Tri-M Productions’ 2025-2026 season includes three full-stage American musicals and two or more smaller musical projects. This funding continues to support the broadening of our regional and out-of-state marketing, continuing to grow the audience for live musical theater in our community, and contributing to the growing recognition of Santa Fe as a destination for performing arts. Funding supports the promotion of programming.

Website: trimsantafe.org