Arts Ignite To Celebrate 20th Anniversary; Honoring Danielle Brooks, Whitney White, and Tom Viola
The event will take place on October 12th at City Winery NYC.
Arts Ignite’s 20th anniversary gala event will be held on Monday, October 12, 2026, at City Winery NYC.
The milestone celebration, titled Illuminate, will honor Danielle Brooks, Whitney White, and Tom Viola, three leaders whose artistry, service, and commitment to the arts reflect Arts Ignite’s ongoing mission to empower young people through arts education.
Music director, conductor, educator, and recent Tony Award winner Mary-Mitchell Campbell and a group of motivated Juilliard students founded Artists Striving to End Poverty (ASTEP) and rebranded it as Arts Ignite in 2022.
Earlier this year, Campbell received the 2026 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, recognizing her decades-long commitment to advocacy and humanitarian work through the arts. “Twenty years ago, we created Arts Ignite with a simple belief: Access to the arts can change the trajectory of a young person’s life,” said Campbell. “Our 20th Anniversary Gala will honor three extraordinary individuals who inspire, and commend dozens of artists, educators, students and supporters who’ve made that work possible. Illuminate will highlight what we can accomplish — together — in the next 20 years.”
The evening will gather members of the Broadway and entertainment communities, Arts Ignite supporters, educators and artists for an electric evening of performances, tributes and stories celebrating the young people at the heart of Arts Ignite’s work and its 20-year history. Proceeds from the gala will support Arts Ignite’s arts education programs, which connect young people with professional artists and educators and create opportunities to build creativity, confidence, collaboration and community through the arts.
Tickets, tables, and sponsorship opportunities are available at www.artsignite.org/gala
HONOREE BIOS:
Danielle Brooks is an Oscar-nominated actress and Grammy Award-winning singer whose immense talent and dedication to her craft continues to pave a way for diversity and inclusion on stage and screen. She starred in The Color Purple, the Warner Bros. feature film adaption of the Broadway musical, produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. Brooks first played Sofia during her Broadway debut in the revival of The Color Purple musical, for which she earned a Tony Award nomination. She portrayed Taystee on Netflix’s breakthrough series Orange is the New Black and can be seen in the critically acclaimed indie feature If I Go, Will They Miss Me? Her new podcast, The InnerMission, intimately explores the subconscious of today's leading creatives. In 2022, she co-founded Black Women on Broadway, which honors the legacy of Black Women’s contributions to the Theatre community.
Brooks served as a teaching artist with Arts Ignite early in the organization’s history. We are thrilled to honor her extraordinary artistic journey and our shared commitment to young people and the arts.
Whitney White is a two-time Tony Award nominee, Obie Award and Lilly Award-winning director, writer and performer. Her Broadway debut, Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African hair Braiding (2023) earned White a Tony nomination for Best Direction of a Play, making her the third African-American woman to ever be nominated in this category. White followed this with a fresh staging of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years and Bess Wohl’s Liberation, the latter for which she received her second Tony nomination. For her work off-Broadway on Walden and the premiere of Liberation White was awarded the Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Directing. She was also awarded the Drama League’s Founders Award for Excellence in Directing.
White’s artistry exemplifies the qualities Arts Ignite seeks to foster in the next generation: curiosity, courage, collaboration, and a belief in the power of the arts to create meaningful change.
Tom Viola is the former Executive Director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the philanthropic heart of Broadway and one of the nation’s leading industry-based not-for-profit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. Since its founding in 1988, BC/EFA has awarded over $350 million for essential services for people living with HIV/AIDS and other critical health issues nationwide. Viola oversaw the expansion of Broadway Cares grant-making mission and the awarding of over $151 million to sustain the safety net of social services provided by the Entertainment Community Fund, as well as strategically awarding an additional $172 million awarded to hundreds of social service providers, public policy and advocacy organizations across the country.
In 2010, Viola received the Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre “in recognition of the leadership, advocacy and creativity with which he has mobilized the theatre community’s response to AIDS and other critical health issues.” In December 2025, Tom Viola was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
Viola has been an invaluable mentor and advisor to Arts Ignite, offering guidance, encouragement, and the benefit of his decades of leadership in the Broadway community.
