Everett G. Powers Fund For Creativity
The Everett G. Powers Fund for Creativity is to inspire innovation through the creative process. One award will be offered annually to an individual or organization and will support new projects that focus on creativity and artistic or innovative excellence. This award is given in recognition of the difficulty of finding funds for innovative work which may, at times, not be popular work, with primary consideration given to creativity, excellence, and artistic or innovative quality. In no way will this award censor or limit artistic or innovative freedom.
We all know that creativity is central to the arts, but it’s also central to many other human endeavors. Inventors are the most obvious of the non-artists, but it can be found in virtually any human endeavor from the arts to business to education to research and beyond. Creativity, at its base, is taking disparate facts, conditions, materials and ideas and putting them together to create new order, new insights, revelations, or techniques that perhaps have not been seen before.
I became fascinated with creativity many years ago when the Arts Council published a newspaper called “Discover.” Staff member Judy Pennington became interested in exploring the creative phenomenon, did a lot of research, and wrote an excellent series of articles about creativity. They focused my understanding of how creativity works and its importance to human advancement.
I hope that by creating a grant that focuses on creativity I will inspire artists and others to focus on creativity as an ideal, to innovate and create new ways of seeing, doing or representing the world.
--Everett
2025 Award Recipient
The Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge proudly announces Deidra Mwalimu, CEO and founder of Network of Women NOW, as the recipient of the 3rd annual Everett G. Powers Fund for Creativity Award.
Mwalimu was recognized for her EmpowerED Hygiene Initiative, an innovative project addressing personal hygiene and reproductive health disparities in underserved Louisiana communities. Through creative and educational approaches, the initiative integrates resources such as the EmpowerED Hygiene Workbook and arts-based workshops to equip young women with essential knowledge and skills, fostering empowerment and self-confidence.