Displaying items by tag: live art

3Arts, the Chicago-based nonprofit grantmaking organization, awarded $860,000 to Chicago artists and announced the recipients of its 3Arts Next Level Awards—$50,000 unrestricted awards given to past 3Arts awardees—during a festive celebration held last night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. The 2026 Next Level awardees: music artists Meagan McNeal and Wanees Zarour; teaching artists Sydney Chatman, Lional Freeman and Stephanie Manriquez; theater artists Sandra Delgado and Miranda Gonzalez; visual artists Cecilia Beaven, Brenda Torres-Figueroa and Farah Salem.

Across its various grantmaking initiatives, 3Arts celebrated a milestone $10 million in artist funding over its lifetime. For the first time since the Next Level Awards were established in 2020, 3Arts expanded this year's awards to include two Next Level Music Awards and two Next Level Theater Awards, in addition to the visual artists and teaching artists the Next Level initiative has supported in its history.

"Being an artist is inherently hard work, and financial pressure often forces creative vision to take a back seat to survival. We created the Next Level Awards to relieve that burden, offering significant, flexible support at moments when artists need the freedom to catch their breath, to take a risk, or reimagine what's possible," said 3Arts Executive Director Cat Tager. She added, "We are thrilled to expand this support into Music and Theater this year. When footing is uncertain, artists remain our most vital compass. They show us how to question, how to heal, and how to chart new paths. Fueling their fire moves all of us forward."

3Arts welcomed hundreds of guests to its 19th Annual 3Arts Awards Celebration, including leadership from the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, Paul Angell Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and The Reva & David Logan Foundation. The event also featured engagement by the 3Arts Board of Directors, and a Host Committee of civic and arts leaders whose longstanding support continues to strengthen 3Arts' mission. During the joyous event, 3Arts also recognized 11 previously announced 3Arts Awards recipients with $30,000 unrestricted grants and 15 artists who were selected by past 3Arts awardees to receive $2,000 unrestricted Make a Wave awards.

Guests were treated to powerful performances, including past 3Arts Awardees Keyierra Collins (2020 3Arts Awardee), Sandra Delgado (2018 3Arts Awardee), Sparklmami (featuring Ariella Granados, 2025 3Arts Awardee).

3Arts has distributed more than $10 million in grants to more than 3,050 artists since 2007. 3Arts awardees reflect 66% women artists, 74% artists of color, and 17% Deaf or disabled artists.

ABOUT THE NEXT LEVEL ARTISTS

[VISUAL ARTIST] Cecilia Beaven (she/her) is a Chicago-based visual artist from Mexico City. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from ENPEG La Esmeralda. Her multidisciplinary artwork has been showcased in solo exhibitions in Mexico City, Houston, and Chicago, and in group shows internationally. Beaven has painted murals in various cities such as Hiketa, Paris, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Pachuca, Tepoztlan, and Tijuana, where she painted a segment of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S. Cecilia is a 2024 3Arts/Chandler Family Awardee and a 2024 Chicago Artists Coalition Resident. She has also received awards including the Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center, the Leroy Neiman Foundation Fellowship at Ox-Bow School of Art, and a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2022, she was named one of the "100 Most Creative Mexicans in the World" by Forbes Mexico, and in 2023, NewCity included her in the "Art 50 – Chicago's Artists' Artists" list. 

[TEACHING ARTIST] Sydney Chatman (she/her) is a Chicago-based director, educator, mentor, producer, and writer, and the founding director of Fly Black Girl Education & Theatre. As a teaching artist for more than two decades, Chatman uses theater to cultivate hope, justice, freedom, and joy, with a particular focus on social justice and empowerment for Black youth. Through her teaching and artistic practice, she advocates for new works that support, challenge, and create opportunities for Black children. In 2008, Chatman founded The Tofu Chitlin' Circuit, creating programs that connect South Side audiences with theater and the arts. Her community-centered work has included collaborations with the Adler Planetarium, Hyde Park Jazz Festival's Back Alley Jazz, Court Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts.  

[THEATER] Sandra Delgado (she/her) is a Colombian-Chicagoan writer, performer, and producer who creates joyful spaces of connection for all. She writes plays inspired by underknown U.S. and Chicago histories centering Latine lives and creates theatrical, music-filled communal experiences. She is best known as the creator and star of La Havana Madrid, her smash hit play with music, originally produced by Teatro Vista with runs at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Goodman Theatre, and theaters nationwide. Her latest play, Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars, has been hailed as a "story that every American needs to hear." (Chicago Tribune) and her performance as Clara, a mother facing deportation "a theatrical force of nature." (Chicago Theatre Review). Her NALAC award-winning spiritual cabaret meets dance party, The Sandra Delgado Experience, has played across Chicago and has enjoyed repeat appearances at Joe's Pub. She is currently developing LIVE.LOVE.NOW, an uplifting show about death and grief. Delgado is a United States Artists Fellow, received the inaugural Walder Foundation Platform Award in 2024, and was named a Chicago Theatre Hall of Fame Player by New City Chicago in 2025. She is the recipient of the Joyce Award, the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, and the 2018 3Arts/Community Award. 

[TEACHING ARTIST] Lional "Brother El" Freeman (he/him) is a Chicago-based composer, Live PA electronic artist, audio engineer, educator, and multidisciplinary creative whose work moves between sound, media, youth authorship, public-space activation, and community healing. Rooted in hip-hop aesthetics, DIY culture, improvisation, and South Side cultural innovation, Freeman uses electronic instruments, field recordings, and visual media to create immersive experiences that connect sound, storytelling, and community. As founder of The Beat Bank and Executive Director of Sonic Explorations, Freeman creates performances, workshops, media programs, and public activations that help young people and communities build creative confidence, technical fluency, and ownership of their own narratives. His practice treats sound as both an artistic language and a tool for connection, reflection, and liberation. 

[THEATER] Miranda Gonzalez (she/her) is a Chicago-born writer, director, producer, facilitator, and organizational strategist whose work centers storytelling, ensemble practice, and cultural transformation. She is the Producing Artistic Director of UrbanTheater Company (UTC), where she has led interdisciplinary projects that bring together theater, music, dance, and oral history to explore Chicago's histories and communities. A founding member of Teatro Luna, Gonzalez has been creating, devising, and developing new work since 2000, with a particular commitment to stories that reflect the complexity of Latino and Black communities. Her plays include Back In The Day: An Immersive 80's House Music Dancesical, Mascogos, and Fina (fee-nah), a time-bending Afro-Peruvian musical currently in development. She is a recipient of a 2022 3Arts/Walder Foundation Award, the Diane Rodriguez Teatrista Award, and the Leaders for a New Chicago Award. 

[MUSIC] Stephanie Manriquez (she/her) is an award-winning writer, radio producer, journalist, and teaching artist with a passion for highlighting social justice issues affecting Latino communities. She sees storytelling as a radical act for the Latinx community and has committed herself to developing spaces for diverse voices to be heard with a larger goal of increasing representation on public and alternative radio. As a journalist, she consistently speaks on topics that most affect her communities. As an educator, she is passionate about mentoring the next generation of Latinx media makers, helping them to become civically minded and artistically innovative. She is Executive Director at Contratiempo magazine and Director of Lumpen Radio. She was a Social Justice News Nexus Fellow at Northwestern University and led the National Museum of Mexican Arts youth journalism program. Manriquez was recognized in 2020 by the Field Foundation and MacArthur Foundation as one of 11 "Leaders for a New Chicago" and in 2023 received the "Public Humanities Award" from Illinois Humanities. 

[MUSIC] Meagan McNeal (she/her) is a Chicago-born vocalist, recording artist, producer, curator, and creative entrepreneur whose work lives at the intersection of music, community, and possibilities. Known for a voice that is both commanding and deeply human, McNeal's practice is rooted in soul, storytelling, and connection. Her national appearances include NBC's The Voice as a member of Team Jennifer Hudson and The Kelly Clarkson Show. In 2026, she made her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut as Safronia Booker in safronia, expanding her artistic practice into theater at age 40. McNeal is also the founder of Pink Elephant Creatives, a creative logistics company that connects artists and ideas with opportunity through curation, production, strategy, and consulting. A 2020 3Arts Award recipient, she is committed to creating sustainable pathways for artists and imagining new models for cultural work that center access, autonomy, and economic opportunity. 

[VISUAL ART] Farah Salem (she/her) is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi interdisciplinary artist and art therapist based in Chicago. Salem's studio practice is rooted in photography, expanding through video, performance, fiber-materials, and installation. Through relational merging and mapping of human and geological bodies, she envisions their liberation. By doing so, she examines themes of agency, making the invisible visible, and potential erosion of socio-cultural conditioning distorting our shared realities. Salem holds a Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her artwork has been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, EXPO CHICAGO, Bolivia Biennial, Paris Contemporary Art Fair, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE),Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait), and more. 

[VISUAL ART] Brenda Torres-Figueroa (she/her/ella) is a Puerto Rican-born interdisciplinary artist, educator, curator, and cultural practitioner based in Chicago. Her work bridges installation, performance, sound, photography, text, public art, and community-based practice, exploring memory, migration, embodiment, and the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations and diasporic communities. Drawing from Afro–Puerto Rican Bomba traditions, archival materials, oral histories, and material memory, she creates spaces for storytelling, connection, and collective transformation. Torres-Figueroa is the founder and director of El Schomburg, an interdisciplinary arts space in Chicago, and co-leads Colectivo Sayba, a Chicago-based Afro–Puerto Rican Bomba ensemble. She is an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a 2021 3Arts Make a Wave awardee. Her work has been presented at institutions including the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. 

[MUSIC] Wanees Zarour (he/him) is an award-winning Palestinian-American composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and community leader with a deeply rooted background in Middle Eastern Music and a pioneer in exploring its intersections with jazz and other traditions. He is the co-director of the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra, director of the Middle East Music Ensemble (70-piece orchestra) at the University of Chicago, and leads "East Loop," a project that explores the intersection of jazz and Middle Eastern music, pushing the parameters of both traditions. Zarour's work focuses on bringing communities together through music, transcending borders, and creating a robust musical ecosystem that centers the global traditions represented in Chicago and the U.S. He has collaborated and performed with renowned artists across the globe, while directing multiple projects that have become fixtures in Chicago's music scene.  

The 2026 recipients of the unrestricted $30,000 awards are dance artists Silvita Diaz Brown and Kara Brody; musicians Marvin Tate and Tahirah Whittington; teaching artists Wisdom Baty and John Chapman; theater artists Tina Fakhrid-Deen and Ana Santos; and visual artists Luca Cruzat, Diana Solís and Sandie (Chunshan) Yi.

 
About 3Arts

Founded in 1912 with a history centered on women artists and reimagined as an arts service organization in 2007, 3Arts supports artists in the Chicago metropolitan and greater Carbondale areas working in the performing, teaching, and visual arts, including women-identified artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists. The 3Arts Awards were launched in 2007 to provide unrestricted awards, project funding, residencies, professional development opportunities, and promotion to help artists take creative risks, build sustainable careers, and contribute to the cultural vitality of Chicago and the broader region.

3Arts extends special thanks to the 2026 Award Partners: The HMS Fund, The SIF Fund at the Chicago Community Foundation, Stan Lipkin & Evelyn Appell Lipkin, and MSU Federal Credit Union.

3Arts gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its 2026 event sponsors: Lead Sponsors, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois and Morningstar; and Corporate Friend, Center for Advanced Emotional Intelligence.

One 3Arts Award is the 2026 3Arts/MSUFCU Community Award celebrates the collective generosity of artists and supporters across Chicago, whose contributions made the award possible.

3Arts also recognizes support for the Next Level Awards from an anonymous donor at The Chicago Community Foundation, the Paul Angell Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

For more information about 3Arts, please visit www.3arts.org.