PORTLAND, ORE.: The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, a Portland Area Theatre Alliance program, has announced the winners of the 2021 Grow Awards. The nine winning projects will be awarded $500 each to produce new work in the 2021 festival. Fertile Ground’s 12th annual festival will be presented as a free, virtual festival running Jan. 28-Feb. 7, 2021.

The winning projects are Be Careful What You Ask For, from producer Family of Color Productions; Lilies, from producer Future Prairie; Oh Myh Dating Hell, from producer Aala Is Possible; Red/Act, from producer This Cherokee Rose; Sex Therapist Confesses, from producer Naked at My Age; Shooflies and Psilocybin, from producer Theatre Vertigo; Tadaima, from producer Eat Cake Gallery; the space/silence/sao in-between, from producer Do It for Mead; and Women of America, from producer V.A.D.M. Realm.

With the funding coming from a Regional Arts & Culture Council Arts Equity & Access grant, initially only five $500 awards were planned. But two anonymous donors, in an effort to support Fertile Ground’s work to increase access and participation for new voices, stepped forward to fund four additional awards. Grow Award-winning projects were selected by the newly instituted Fertile Ground Grow Panel.

“It was exhilarating to read strong and diverse applications submitted by artists from a number of underrepresented communities in the region,” said Grow Panel chairperson Roy Arauz in a statement. “It is exciting for me to see how willing the leadership at Fertile Ground has been to listen to the wants and needs of the community and be open to make the adjustments needed to get us to a more inclusive and equitable festival, not only in the request for proposals but also in the make-up of the Grow Panel.”