2004 Signature Grant Recipient

Liz Harvey: $5000.00

Musician/ songwriter Liz Harvey used a Signature Grant to create approximately 30 new songs about the landscape of her Madison neighborhood, Bram’s Addition. She is a long-time resident of the neighborhood and says proudly that she lives there by choice. While many outsiders point out the relatively high crime rates and low-income
housing in Bram’s Addition, Harvey rebuts that the neighborhood has the highest level of diversity in Madison and still enjoys the benefits of a small neighborly community. In her proposal she says, “The things I cherish about my south-side neighborhood are not widely known- the supreme sense of community, the watchful, neighborly friendliness, the healthy interactions between young and old, the shy warmth that permeates every passing ‘hello’ between strangers on stoops and sidewalks.”

Harvey applied for the Signature Grant because of the difficulties of continuing her craft while having to subsidize her income through outside work. The $5,000.00 Grant allowed her to work for eleven uninterrupted weeks to finally capture the things she cherishes about her neighborhood in song. The CitiARTS Grant leveraged an additional $7,000 in matched and in-kind funding to meet the total project cost of $12,000. At the end of the eleven weeks Liz had created a “Madison Songbook” including 14 songs created during this period to be recorded on a CD called Bram’s Addition.