Bronx Recognizes its Own (BRIO)

For 35 years, BCA’s BRIO Award has recognized artists from a wide range of creative disciplines who have the ability to showcase their artistic practice through technique and knowledge of their craft. Each year, BRIO provides direct support of $5,000 to individual Bronx artists who create works in the literary, media, visual, and performing arts. Artists who have received a BRIO award represent the vast diversity of Bronx residents, inclusive of all ethnicities, ages, and genders. Over the years, BRIO has become one of the most coveted distinctions amongst artists residing in the Bronx.

BCA highlights BRIO’s core emphasis of recognizing outstanding artists in the Bronx and has distributed over $2 million to over 550 artists in more than three decades. Peer review panels for BRIO are comprised of seasoned artists and arts professionals from outside the borough who are guided by discipline-specific criteria and experience, review submissions anonymously, and select grantees for distinction whose work demonstrates the following:

• An innovative approach to the discipline;
• Probing and pushing of boundaries;
• Technical expertise and high level of skill;
• Ingenuity and rigor in its production;
• An awareness of the medium within a historical context; and
• Compelling vision and original voice.