LAF to Receive $35,000 NEA Grant for LAF Fellowship Program

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has approved the Landscape Architecture Foundation for a $35,000 Grants for Arts Projects award. This grant will support the LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership. The LAF Fellowship was established to foster transformational leadership capacity and support innovation to amplify the role of landscape architects and bring about impactful change in the world. LAF has received several Grants for Arts Projects in recent years. Previous grants have supported the LAF Fellowship and the Case Study Investigation program.

Landscape architects selected for the LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership engage in a yearlong journey to develop their leadership capacity and work on ideas that have the potential to create positive and profound change in the profession, the environment, and humanity. Each Fellow receives a $25,000 award and dedicates 12 weeks of time over the course of the year to pursuing their proposed project. This work is supported by facilitated discussions, critiques, mentorship, and explorations of transformational leadership that occur during virtual meetings and three 2.5-day residencies. Since 2017, there have been 43 LAF Fellows. 

"LAF is appreciative of the NEA’s continued support of this transformational leadership program,” said LAF CEO Barbara Deutsch. “The LAF Fellowship has empowered landscape architects to tackle topics such as climate positive construction, designing for neurodivergence, landscape architecture in K-12 education, and insect biodiversity. Thanks in part to the NEA, the fellowship will continue to serve as a means for landscape architects to take time out, in any stage of their career, and apply their unique skills and landscape architecture approach to critical environmental, social, and economic challenges.”

For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.