In 2010, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation awarded grants to support health, education and the arts. These grants are designed to address the Foundation’s mission to enhance quality of life by supporting research that will lead to relief for those with chronic disease, promoting equitable access to a baseline of literacy and enabling inspiration through the arts. The Foundation is pleased to support the important work of these recipients who reflect its core values of innovation, collaboration and connection.

Health

On August 4, 2010, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced the recipients of its 2010 Innovator Awards Program for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).  Each team of investigators will receive a $100K one-year grant in support of their respective innovative research projects.

The 2010 Innovator Awards Program recipients are:

Andrew S. Neish, M.D., Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, and Julie A. Champion, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, for their research project entitled “Bioengineering Bacterially Derived Immunomodulants: A Novel Therapeutic Approach to IBD”

Dan Peer, Ph.D., Tel Aviv University, Israel and Eran Elinav, M.D., Ph.D., Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel, for their research project entitled “Harnessing Immuno-nanotechnology for Therapy of Inflammatory Bowel Disease”

The Foundation received a tremendous response (over 100 applications) to its inaugural Innovator Awards Program for IBD Research during its February-March 2010 application timeframe.  Project selection was based on input provided by the Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board and final approval by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s Board of Directors.

Arts

The Kenneth Rainin Foundation supports dance and theater organizations that display artistic promise and vision and bring vital performances and programs to the public. In addition, in collaboration with the San Francisco Film Society, the Foundation has created a grantmaking program to support Bay Area filmmakers in the production of narrative features with social justice themes.

Awards in Dance:

AXIS Dance Company for ODD, an evening-length work created by Shinichi Iova-Koga/inkBoat, AXIS Dance Company and cellist, Joan Jeanrenaud

CounterPULSE for Performing Diaspora, a festival, residency program, symposium and discussion series designed to support artists who are deeply rooted in traditional forms, and who are using those forms as a basis for experimentation and innovation

DanceArt, Inc. for WestWave Dance, a presentation of world premiere contemporary choreography from 24 innovative dance artists

Dance USA for Bay Area dance professionals to participate in Dance/USA’s 2011 annual conference in Chicago, IL

Dancers’ Group for ONSITE presents Katie Faulkner, a new site-specific dance and video performance along the Market Street corridor

Eastside Arts Alliance for the Oakland Hip Hop Dance Institute, a choreography showcase, dance conference and live performance with dancers and musicians all honoring the African American urban dance vernacular

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts for Konyifafa, a dance theater work welding together cultural traditions from Ghana, West Africa and Salvador Bahia, Brazil

Epiphany Productions Sonic Dance Theater for SF Trolley Dances 2010, the commissioning of 6-7 choreographers and 40+ performers to create outdoor, site-specific work, to be presented in 16 performances along the N-Judah MUNI line from Duboce Park to Golden Gate Park

Joe Goode Performance Group for The Rambler, a new collaboration of dance theater with world-renowned designer and puppeteer Basil Twist about a restless, peripatetic soul who can’t stay put

LEVYdance for the Bay Area Contemporary Choreographers Shared Program presenting LEVYdance and The Foundry at Z Space

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company for Light Moves, a collaboration with multi-media artist Naomie Kremer, composer Paul Dresher and poet Michael Palmer to premiere in November 2011

Project Bandaloop for IdEgo, a collaborative vertical dance work with choreographer Amelia Rudolph, sculptor/set designer Todd Laby, lighting designer Jack Carpenter, musician/composer Dana Leong, and media artist Austin Forbord to premiere in the fall of 2011

RAWdance for Hiding in the Spaces Between, a full-length collaborative piece fusing new media with live dance, exploring the changing role of authenticity in a technological world, to premiere at ODC Theater in February 2011

Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF for the KUNST-STOFF / arts fest 2010, a central Market Street performance festival

Yerba Buena Arts & Events for Dancing in the Gardens, 9 culturally diverse dance programs presented outdoors as part of the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival

Awards in Theater:

American Conservatory Theater for Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, a world premiere musical conceived and created by Tony Award-winning playwright Jeff Whitty (AVENUE Q) and Tony-nominated director Jason Moore (AVENUE Q and SHREK) and Jake Shears and John Garden (both of the Grammy-nominated international musical phenomenon Scissor Sisters)

Aurora Theatre Company for the workshop of The Soldier’s Tale, a new fully staged, multidisciplinary adaptation of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat in collaboration with San Francisco Ballet’s former prima ballerina, Muriel Maffre

Central Works for the Central Works New Play Program 2010 – 2012, a 3-year initiative to develop and produce 9 world premiere plays utilizing the Central Works Method

Crowded Fire Theater Company in support of the Matchbox Reading Series, providing workshop time for plays in development by three local playwrights and one national playwright culminating in free public readings

Cutting Ball Theater for The New Experimental Plays Initiative, providing an artistic home to local playwrights, directors, actors, and designers interested in challenging themselves and deepening their work through experimentation

Encore Theatre Company for Circle Mirror Transformation, the West Coast premiere of the award winning play by Annie Baker

EXIT Theatre for the EXIT Press Play Publication, to publish plays by four playwrights with the goal of extending the lives of plays, and supporting the authors in getting future productions, commissions, and recognition

Magic Theatre for The Lily’s Revenge, the rolling world premiere of Obie-Award winner Taylor Mac’s fantastical production: a unique, inspiring community-building theatrical experience featuring 40 actors, dancers, musicians, performing artists, and videographers created in collaboration with many small Bay Area arts organizations

PlayGround for the Commissioning Initiative and the New Play Production Fund to develop six new full-length works by PlayGround alumni in partnership with Bay Area professional theaters

Playwrights Foundation for The Resident Playwrights Initiative: Artistic Career Development & Production Fund, offering an artistic home and career advancement to 10 mid-career and exceptional emerging Bay Area playwrights over three years

The San Francisco International Arts Festival for SFIAF 2011 to promote the festival which will take place at Fort Mason, Union Square and other venues

SF Playhouse for the world premiere of William Bivins’ The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry

ShadowLight Productions for The Good-for-Nothing Lover, a unique blend of shadow theatre, poetry reading, movement theatre and live music

Shotgun Players for God’s Plot, a new play by Mark Jackson weaving together several stories in the life of a puritanical American community whose religion and politics vie for their values

The Crucible for Machine, a world premiere, multi-media performance in January 2012

Theatre Bay Area for the Mid-Market Arts District Feasibility Study to explore the potential for multi-purpose arts spaces in the Mid-Market District in San Francisco

Awards in Film:

Debbie Brubaker – 504 – Development. 504 is the story of the longest takeover of a Federal building in American history and the birth of the disability rights movement.

Krisy Gosney - Manhandled – Screenwriting. Manhandled is the story of a longtime lesbian couple undergoing shock waves of changing perception and identify as one partner’s transition from female to male impacts their relationship.

Annie Howell – Black Kid – Pre-production. Black Kid is the comic coming-of-age story of a geeky, 11-year-old biracial kid from New York whose world is turned upside down when his family relocates to a rural, all-white Appalachian town. With the support of his parents, he learns to define himself rather than fulfill the expectations of others.

Barry Jenkins – Jeremiad – Screenwriting. Jeremiah goes back to San Francisco following a term in San Quentin and quickly discovers that there’s a stigma on Black men returning from prison for which he has a compelling rebuttal, in the form of a prison clinic printout specifically declaring him HIV negative. The ensuing consequences challenge Jeremiah more than his incarceration did until he comes to understand that hope is the product of honesty.

Christopher Mason Johnson – Skirt – Screenwriting. Skirt tells the story of an idealistic political campaign worker who must decide whether to perpetuate a lie in order to help promote a cause that she believes in or set the record straight before the truth is uncovered and run the risk of undermining her campaign.

Maryam Keshavarz – Circumstance – Post-production. Against the backdrop of a reactionary Iranian government, a father fights to create a sanctuary of music, art and intellectual curiosity for his two children, but one child’s emerging sexuality is threatened by the other’s newfound religious devotion and political vigilance.

Lynn Hershman Leeson – Killer App – Development. A visionary doctor at a fertility clinic realizes that a patient’s DNA holds the key to the next evolutionary leap from homo sapiens to machine sapiens. As the patient learns more and more, she becomes increasingly aware that greed is destroying Earth and decides to develop a killer app that will save the world and her newborn twins.

Mike Ott - Teenage Wasteland – Production. A young illegal immigrant who dreams of escaping her staid life in a sleepy desert town decides that the time to act has arrived when her impressionable best friend falls under the influence of his militaristic, vigilante older brother. She convinces him to leave with her and pursue their dreams in San Francisco.

Morgan Wise – Western Addition – Screenwriting. Western Addition traces the lives of six African American residents of a crumbling San Francisco apartment building over the course of a single weekend in 1970 and the transformation of African American culture brought on by the second great migration of Blacks from the rural South to the industrial centers in the North.

Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild – Post-production. In this mythological epic inspired by the erosion crisis impacting the wetlands of America’s Gulf Coast, a ferocious young heroine vows to save her father, who is stricken by a mysterious illness, and her rapidly sinking island home.

Education

The Kenneth Rainin Foundation supports emergent and early literacy programs that serve children from disadvantaged economic backgrounds in Oakland, California.

Awards in Early Literacy:

The Oakland Public Library to provide books and materials for the East Oakland Community Library

Raising a Reader for the Alameda County Project to encourage book sharing and “read-aloud” routines in the homes of low-income families in Oakland