Erin Keane

The Kentucky Arts Council awarded more than $50,000 in grants to six organizations to provide “creative aging and lifelong learning” arts programs for Kentucky’s senior citizens.  The Arts Access Assistance grants were created last fall to support programming for specific underserved groups. The first fiscal year of funding will support programs for the state’s senior citizens.

Stage One Family Theatre’s production of Joseph Robinette's stage adaptation of E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web" is now open at the Kentucky Center. This year is the 60th anniversary of “Charlotte’s Web” winning the Newbery Honor award for excellence in children’s literature. White's novel about a "radiant" pig and his barnyard friends remains one of the best-selling children’s books of all time. 

“Charlotte’s Web” is a fun and heartfelt play about talking animals, but its themes are deep – the inevitability of death runs through the story. 

The Kentucky Nonprofit Network staged its first Kentucky Gives Day this week, raising $330,000 for 380 nonprofit organizations in one 24-hour online campaign on April 24.

In the annual Kentucky Writers' Day program at the Capitol, Governor Steve Beshear inducted poet Frank X Walker as the state's new poet laureate. Walker is the first African American to hold the post, and at 53 years old, the University of Kentucky professor is also the youngest. The Kentucky Arts Council announced Walker's appointment in February.

Quilting is a time-honored craft that traditionally made beautiful and efficient use of scrap fabric and scarce materials. The annual juried exhibit at New Albany's Carnegie Center for Art and History showcasing the artform's contemporary expression celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

"Form, Not Function" opens May 10 with a reception honoring the 25 art quilts selected by jury from more than 300 entries this year. Participating artists come from as far away as California and as close as Louisville and Southern Indiana.

A bugler plays the call to the post to signal the beginning of the race, but Louisville's Bourbon Baroque ensemble will end their season with an 18th-century interpretation of the iconic spring-time blast. Indiana University Early Music professor Kris Kwapis will play the baroque trumpet for Bourbon Baroque’s final season concert, which includes Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s choral piece “Te Deum.”

Actors Theatre of Louisvilles' apprentices open their final production of the season tonight. The New Voices Young Playwrights Festival is a bill of ten-minute plays written by eight area high school students. 

The plays were selected from more than 500 ten-minute plays submitted by middle and high school students from Kentucky and Southern Indiana this year. Each play in the festival receives a full production, with a director, designers, a dramaturg, a cast of apprentice actors and a seat in the rehearsal hall for the playwright. 

The first season of our audio diary series “The Big Break,” comes to a close this week. Since last fall, understudies and apprentices take us behind the curtain at the Kentucky Opera, Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Louisville Ballet. 

We'll launch the next season of The Big Break with a new class of up-and-coming artists in the early fall. 

For their final diaries, actor Samantha Beach and dancer Claire Horrocks reflect on their time in Louisville and shaer what lies ahead now that the season is over. 

The Kentucky Foundation for Women has awarded $100,000 in grants to Kentucky artists. The grants are awarded to feminist artists and organizations to develop their artistic skills, explore new techniques or create new works. 

Small grants ranging from $1,000 to $7,500 will support projects ranging from a Lexington music series focused on African American female composers to a nonfiction book and website about life as an active-duty military wife. Of the 36 artist enrichment grants awarded this month, 12 totaling $34,000 will fund Louisville-based artists and their projects.