There’s something new about this year’s Pew Fellowships in the Arts. Every year since 1992, the program — funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts — has awarded grants of $50,000 to individual artists in such disciplines as music composition, craft arts and choreography. This year, for the first time, folk and traditional arts were included as a category — and as a result, that category accounts for more than half of this year’s winners.

"We’ve always tried to be very broad in the categories," says director Melissa Franklin. But folk artists weren’t faring as well in categories such as craft or music. Franklin partially attributes this to the fact that folk and traditional artists were not being judged on their own terms, by people in their specific field. Their work was not being seen in context and often encompassed multiple categories, she explains, and thus was difficult for the panels to evaluate.

The panel process is two-part. First a preliminary panel of experts in each discipline category reviews the applications and selects finalists. Then a final interdisciplinary panel, composed of experts from all three disciplines being considered that year, selects the recipients.

With feedback from the Fellowship’s Regional Council members, Franklin realized that having a folk and traditional arts panel, composed of experts in that field who know the work and criteria, would better serve these artists. And so the new category was added for the 2000 grant year.

The 12 categories are offered on a four-year rotating cycle; three one year, three others the next, etc. This year, in addition to folk and traditional arts, the categories were painting and scriptworks.

Forty-nine artists, many who’d never applied for a Pew fellowship before, submitted folk and traditional arts applications, according to Franklin. She says she was extremely surprised at the range — everything from classical dance (Indian, Cambodian, Chinese) to lots of percussion work.

The seven recipients in the new category were Frito Bastien, painter; Pablo Batista Jr., percussionist; Terrence Cameron, steel drum maker/musician; Sheryl Robin David, fiber artist; Peache Jarman, percussionist; Mick Moloney, traditional Irish musician; and Elaine Hoffman Watts, percussionist.

In the painting category, four Fellows were selected from 278 applications. They are Frank Bramblett, Emily Brown, Babette Martino and Alice Oh. One playwright, Kimmika L. H. Williams, was selected in the scriptworks category from 61 applications.

Crochet artist Sheryl Robin David says she’s received the Pew Fellowship information just about every year since the program began, but never applied until this year. When she heard about the new category she said, "Wow, this is for me."

Terrence Cameron, who unsuccessfully applied for the grant several years ago, says the new category better fit his field. As a drum maker and a musician, his work doesn’t easily fit into categories such as composition or crafts.

Elaine Hoffman Watts, a Klezmer musician, didn’t even know the folk and traditional arts category was new because she had never applied for the Fellowship before. It was only through the encouragement of the Philadelphia Folklore Project that she decided to apply. And even then she had her doubts: "I didn’t think I had a chance like a snowball in hell," says the 67-year-old Watts.

Watts isn’t alone, says Debora Kodish, director of the Philadelphia Folklore Project and a member of the Pew Fellowship in the Arts Regional Council. Kodish says many of these artists are so deep into their work and the community that they are simply out of the grantmaking loop. According to Kodish, there are almost no grants (except for a statewide grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and an NEA grant) specifically for these kinds of artists. The $350,000 awarded to the seven Pew Fellows more than doubles the amount that has been awarded in a single year by the PCA to folk artists across the entire state of Pennsylvania.

Which is why Kodish not only encouraged the artists to apply, but ran a seminar specific to the Pew Fellowships to guide them through the application process. And apparently it worked. According to Kodish, 28 of the 49 folk and traditional arts applicants and six of the seven award recipients came to at least one of the Project’s grant workshops.

"When you open a door, you see what’s there," says Kodish of the new Pew category. "This is the first time that door has really been open."