The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) announced today that its Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program is coming to San Antonio, Texas. Since 2007, the New York City program has connected nearly 200 NYC-based immigrants with community mentors, arts organizations, and fellow artists. The program aims to be sustainable and keep creatives involved well past their years as mentees; many of the facilitators are themselves immigrants, and some were previously mentees in the program.
The expansion of the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program to San Antonio (as well as to Detroit, MI, Newark, NJ, and Oakland, CA) is funded by a two-year grant from the Ford Foundation.
Zelene Pineda Suchilt (Rebelene), an immigrant artist in New York City who was involved in the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program as a mentee in 2012 and a mentor in 2014, 2015, and 2016, said of her experience in the program:
“NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program and the community it has fostered has been an invaluable resource for my formation as an immigrant artist in New York City. As a mentee, I was encouraged to strengthen my commitment to my practice and development as a poet. Participating as a mentor has given me the opportunity to transform my experiences of success and failure as a working artist into lessons of guidance and confirmation to other immigrant artists navigating the art world.”
Currently, the Newark program is accepting applications from visual and multidisciplinary artists, performers, literary artists, and social practice artists, with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center acting as NYFA’s lead partner organization. The San Antonio program will be announced soon, once NYFA locks in partner organizations.
