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Fringe Festival organizer ROBERT MCFADDEN will spend 16 days in Edmonton, Alberta, and Victoria, British Columbia, studying Fringe Festival operations, previewing overseas groups and learning the latest developments in festival management.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, received $10,000 to develop Church, which will be presented in April 2007. Drawing from personal experiences, Young Jean Lee plans to make the most moving, breathtakingly beautiful church service she's capable of making, an original ceremony that borrows from a wide range of religious and cultural traditions. Her intent is to create a complicated and evocative experience for the audience. This grant recognizes the promise of experimental playwright and director Young Jean Lee.

A two-year grant of $30,000 was awarded to the JAMAICA CENTER FOR ARTS AND LEARNING, Jamaica, New York, in support of the participation of emerging artists in its Visual Arts Program. The Centers mission is to make the arts accessible to the entire community. It is dedicated to supporting the creation of work by emerging and established artists, especially those who are working from cultural traditions and artistic disciplines underrepresented in the artistic community as a whole. The Visual Arts Program mounts thematic group exhibitions, an annual solo show of the Workspace artist in residence and exhibitions organized by independent curators. The Center advocates for artists by providing career resources, exhibition opportunities and support.

ALLISON HERRERA, Minneapolis, received a grant for Prayer of the Sorrowful Mystery, a personal story about Herreras grandmother, a Salinan Indian from the mountainous region of California known as the Santa Lucias . This personal account is framed by the larger context of the social conflict that birthed California.

The artist will study printmaking techniques at the Bentlage Printmaking Association at the Kloster Bentlage in Rheine, Germany to strengthen her printmaking skills and inform new ways to approach her studio process. She will also visit and conduct related research in Hengelo, Netherlands, and at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

The Directors authorized a two-year grant of $80,000 to P.S. 122, New York City, to subsidize commissions for emerging artists appearing in the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 seasons. P.S. 122 is a performance laboratory that supports the development of works by individual artists with authentic visions. It finds, develops and brings to the public eye new artistic creations from diverse cultures and points of view. Artists investigations are encouraged through commissions, performance opportunities, donated and rented rehearsal space, workshop space, constructive criticism and discerning audiences. Jerome commissions are up-front monies that pass through P.S. 122 to the creative artist who uses them for expenses associated with the development of the new workrehearsal fees, rental of space, costumes, music, etc.

ILZE KLAVINA MUELLER, a writer and translator, will spend four weeks traveling in Germany and Latvia, retracing her childhood and collecting material for her memoir A Normal Refugee Childhood.

THE LOFT LITERARY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $100,000 in support of the Minnesota Writers Career Initiative Program. Founded in 1974, The Loft, an independent literary center, fosters a writing community, supports the artistic development of individual writers, and builds an audience for literature. Jerome Foundation has supported the Writers Career Initiative Program since 1992. It serves writers who have achieved artistic recognition for their work and who have the potential to significantly expand that recognition and audience. The program's purpose is to utilize and leverage this potential in order to advance those writers. The program is open to poets, prose writers, authors of children's literature and spoken word artists. Projects may include editorial or mentoring support for new manuscripts, career development activities such as developing public speaking skills, book tours and collaborations with other writers or artists; strategies for connecting with communities or regions important to a writer's voice or genre; and the creation of audio books, CDs and websites.