Professor L.M. Bogad has recently received two major grants for his project Sinfonia de la Justica/Symphony of Justice, a performance with farmworkers in the vineyards of Sonoma County about their struggles around issues of labor and climate justice and immigrants’ rights. Bogad won a $50,000 Creative Work Fund Grant, and a $100,000 San Francisco Foundation Creative Corps Grant.

The project will engage indigenous farmworkers in composing and performing trilingual monologues, Oaxacan/Zapotec music, and digital looping “economusic,” all based on the economic data of their lives and working conditions. 

Bogad is collaborating with the nonprofit group North Bay Jobs With Justice on this project.

Backed by a one-time $60 million investment from the State of California General Fund, the San Francisco Foundation is one of 14 partners with the California Arts Council that are creating programs for organizations for artists, creators, and cultural practitioners to advance equity and build a sustainable workforce. 

The Creative Work Fund was initiated in 1994 by four Bay Area foundations that wanted to contribute to the creation of new artworks and support local artists. It is now a program of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by generous grants from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Creative Work Fund grants celebrate the role of artists as problem-solvers and the making of art as a profound contribution to intellectual inquiry and to the strengthening of communities.