Arts and Education Council Names 5 Finalists in stARTup Creative Competition

The Arts and Education Council has named five finalists in the third annual stARTup Creative Competition. A partnership with the PNC Foundation, the stARTup competition encourages the development of great ideas with art at their core that strengthen and enhance the St. Louis arts community.

Finalists will pitch their ideas to the panel, tomorrow, on April 11 and up to two winners will be announced by the end of April. The winners will receive a cash prize of up to $20,000, one year of free office space in the Arts and Education Council’s arts incubator, free performance and meeting space, access to technology and Wi-Fi, mentoring, idea-sharing and professional development opportunities.

The 2019 finalists are (in alphabetical order):

Battle of the Arts

A paid youth art competition that aims to promote community engagement and cultivate the next generation of professional artists.

Black Tulip Chorale

St. Louis’s first and only free-standing LGBTQIA+ all-gender, all-identity choral organization supporting social consciousness.

EBT Culture Card

A consortium of St. Louis arts and culture organizations to give EBT cardholders free or heavily discounted access to cultural resources.

Gateway Academy of Classical Art

An artists’ collective offering full-time curriculum of traditional representational drawing and painting skills, workshops and open studio figure drawing and high school summer scholarships.

Viva Music

An online platform to make instrument donation transparent and accessible for schools and arts education organizations.

The stARTup Creative Competition was launched in 2017 as a partnership between the Arts and Education Council and PNC Foundation to identify arts entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for the St. Louis arts community and provide the resources they need to further develop those ideas.

The 2019 finalists were selected by a panel of local arts and entrepreneurial experts, including: Cynthia A. Prost, Arts and Education Council; Debbie Marshall, PNC Bank; Kathleen Bauer, T-REX; Sheila Burkett, Spry Digital; Antionette Carroll, Creative Reaction Lab; Chris Dornfeld, Maritz; and Matt Homann, Filament. For more information about the Arts and Education Council and the stARTup Creative Competition, visit KeepArtHappening.org.

Previous winners include Shayba Muhammad, for The Makers Program, which recently launched the Maker’s Mart, earlier this month.

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