Doris Duke Foundation Reveals New Grants Supporting Technology Infrastructure in the Performing Arts
These grants total more than $4 million over 5 years.
The Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) has announced five grants in partnership with the Ford Foundation. These grants total more than $4 million over 5 years to programs and initiatives aimed at supporting the advancement of technology infrastructure that will influence and transform the performing arts field.
The organizations and projects receiving these grants include:
- Junebug Productions - To support The Future is Us: AI and Afro-Futurism in Black Theater Management a project to develop and implement an ethically sourced, culturally grounded AI platform to streamline administrative operations.
- Kinetic Light - To provide support for research and development of multisensory access tech systems, advancing the disability arts movement through the intersection of transformative performance and accessible technology.
- The Healing Project: New York Live Arts Inc. - To support The Healing Project in their use of art, technology, and advocacy to collectively build a world centered around healing.
- Open Circle Theatre Inc. - To support the development of VitaNova, an interactive, hybrid musical designed to be accessible from the ground up for Disabled theatre artists and audiences.
- Producer Hub Inc. - To support Marcus Roberts in the use of technology for developing and implementing fully accessible software and other tools for remote, real-time performance and recordings by jazz musicians.
- SOZO Impact & Relaxed Animals: To support EARTH.SPEAKS, an XR platform for the Osage Nation and other Native communities that integrates Indigenous language, history, and somatic practices into globally accessible, site-specific experiences. The platform is led by brooke smiley and accompanies the sustainable and collaborative earth markers tracing the Osage homelands and forced diaspora.
“Infrastructure is an essential and often overlooked component of the artistic process. By investing in organizations, we are helping to ensure that artists have access to development runways they need for technology innovations. This includes production development, platform expansion and boundary defying accessibility,” said Ashley Ferro-Murray, PhD, program director for the arts at DDF. “These new grants support our vision that artists should be at the forefront of designing ethical technological futures.”
“For the past decade, Kinetic Light has researched, developed, and shared technology in service of transformative art and accessible audience experiences. This work is grounded in a commitment to aesthetically equitable access and art,” said Alice Sheppard, Founder & Artistic Director of Kinetic Light. “We are grateful to the Doris Duke Foundation for their investment in this work, which we believe benefits both the disability arts movement and the broader performing arts field.”
This new suite of grants continues to strengthen the work the Foundation has done at the nexus of Performing Arts and Technology. Earlier in 2026, DDF announced a new initiative called Arts Make Technology (AMT). This multimillion-dollar investment was made in partnership with the Mozilla Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Ford Foundation to build a cross-sector infrastructure that empowers performing artists to not just respond to technological change, but to help shape it.
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