Is Twentynine Palms Experiencing an Arts-Funding Boom?
The Levitt Lands in Twentynine Palms—but it's not the only game in town
Let’s start by congratulating Twentynine Palms residents Audrey Philpot and Anna Stump and the Twentynine Palms Music Series Committee, which are responsible for snagging one of the most visible national arts awards to land here in years: a Levitt Music Series Grant, totaling $120,000.
For a city home to dozens of musicians and many one-off events, the Levitt is a big deal. Not only does it bring a free, outdoor live music series to Freedom Plaza, it does so for three years at $40,000 per year. Much of that money will be spent within the community to pay local arts as part of a mix of talent, event producers, and gear rental. Perhaps the Twentynine Palms Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID) will step up with a matching grant?
This wasn’t a random selection by the Levitt Foundation; it was an online competition, and Philpot and Stump mobilized an enthusiastic cadre of volunteers. It was digital organizing done right—neighbors pestering neighbors to vote, friends sending reminders, artists urging their audiences, and local social media groups experiencing the rare sensation of using their collective energy for something other than reporting lost (and found) dogs.
When the results were announced on November 18, Twentynine Palms stood among 32 cities nationwide chosen for the 2026 Levitt award. No small feat feat for a rural city better known for proximity to a national park than for national arts funding.
The pride is real and deserved. But the Levitt grant may be the opening act of a much larger story.
Is there a larger surge?
If you’ve been paying attention to arts news in Twentynine Palms lately, you may have noticed a shift: grants are flowing into a region that has historically relied on self-funding and volunteers as the primary arts economy. This even at a time when the federal government is kneecapping funding sources like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum of Library Services.
Is Morongo Basin experiencing a bona fide surge in arts funding? Or is this just a momentary glitch like the steady rain we’ve seen over the last few days?
If we zoom out from the Levitt win and scan statewide grants, we can see the California Arts Council (CAC) has been steadily funding projects in the Morongo Basin and that many of them cover overhead and administrative costs.
Institute of Inquiry
Twentynine Palms makes up a surprisingly large share of these awards; this year, the Institute of Inquiry won two grants:
$18,255 for its Creative Fields arts apprenticeship program
$13,800 in operational support
Creative Fields, set to launch in 2025, is a 28-week arts workforce program for transitional-aged youth (14–18). The teens will be working in ceramics, fiber arts, woodworking, photography, performance, all taught through studio workshops totaling 115 hours, guided by teaching artists who receive—notably—professional, values-based employment.
This is not a “teen craft class.” It is a structured career pipeline, addressing a gap widely acknowledged across the Basin: young people rarely see a future for themselves here, even as the region markets itself to tourists on its creativity.
The Institute plans to build out teaching artist residencies, student-teaching placements, and early childhood educator roles, essentially stitching together a desert-based creative workforce.
The Institue of Inquriy launched in 2017 and is a promising local environmental and arts-education force.
City of Twentynine Palms Parks & Recreation
Next stop: Parks and Rec, which secured a $18,500 CAC Impact Project grant for a large-scale tile mural at Freedom Plaza, led by artist Rhonda Lane Coleman of Groundwork Arts.
Hundreds of tiles will be shaped by local students and residents through free workshops, forming a collaborative mural reflecting “who Twentynine Palms has been—and who it is becoming.”
Joshua Tree Living Arts has won $21,500 for an eight-month series of youth workshops that culminate in contributions to the same Freedom Plaza mural.
The workshops position youth as authors of public space, which may be a subtle encouragement for young people to feel a connection to Twentynine Palms.
Mil-Tree
Based in Joshua Tree, Mil-Tree serves many veterans in Twentynine Palms as well as the broader Morongo Basin region. It won two CAC grants—$13,200 for general operating support and $21,000 for its “Writes of Passage” storytelling program. These allow Mil-Tree to deepen its long-standing work with the veteran community.
Operational support may not sound glamorous, but it is the backbone of sustainable nonprofit work: paying directors, admin staff, accounting, and outreach roles. The grant allows Mil-Tree to expand research tools and implement leadership succession planning, signals of an organization maturing into long-term stability.
In a city where the presence of the Marine base shapes nearly every aspect of daily life, Mil-Tree’s ability to integrate veterans into creative community frameworks is not just arts programming. It is cultural infrastructure.
Other Local Funders: A Growing Ecosystem of Creative Support
PAAC Grants
The city’s own Public Arts Advisory Committee (PAAC) has funded everything from individual artists to the Collage Club at Corner 62. A notable win: a $100,000 Creative Corps grant sponsored by the CAC in 2023 for free art workshops at Freedom Plaza centered on trauma, ecology, and social justice. The PAAC is currently asking residents to nominate an arts advocate of the year. Information can be found here and nominations are due by December 8.
Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID)
The TBID, which is funded through hotel and lodging assessments, provides some grants and sponsorships that are arts-focused but many fall within the cultural sector: Over the past years, TBID has funded
Project Sheba – $3,000 for the Desert Fringe Theatre and Cultural Arts Festival
Friends of the Historic Plaza – $3,000 for the Chalk Festival & Art Fair
Giant Soapbox Productions – $1,000 for the Wonder Valley 10-Minute Play Festival
Dance Mojave – $20,000 for “The Planets” at Sky’s the Limit
Theatre 29 – $20,000 for 2024–25 season productions
Organized by Desert General and supported by Visit 29 Palms, the Twentynine Palms Book Festival has become a major literary draw. This past year the festival reports that it brought:
800+ attendees
94 authors
15 presses, bookstores, and literary orgs
Participants from CA, MA, AZ, TX, HI, NY, France, and Belgium
The TBID awarded the festival $20,000 for its November 2025 expansion—a sign that literary arts are gaining a larger foothold in the city’s identity (and marketing strategies).
For 2026 TBID has extended its deadline for grants and events sponsorships:
Round One: For events scheduled to take place January 1 – June 30, 2026
December 31, 2025
Round Two: For events scheduled to take place July 1 – December 31, 2026
April 1, 2026
Apply HERE
AHA Projects
AHA Projects1 has funded Desertrade, Hi-Desert Artists, Mojaveland, Art Queen.
So—Is This a Surge?
Short answer: Yes. But with caveats.
Why it is a surge: Twentynine Palms is receiving more arts funding than ever before, with diverse grants supporting music, youth arts, veterans’ programs, public art, festivals, literary arts, and more. This influx includes multiyear commitments such as Levitt, structural support through CAC operating grants, and community-wide funding via TBID events. As a result, the city’s creative ecosystem is expanding, with nonprofits, city departments, collectives, and individual artists all benefiting from increased support.
Why it may not feel like one (yet): Much of the region’s arts funding remains tied to short-term projects rather than salaries, leaving administrative support thin and cultural labor undervalued at the municipal level. In addition, the PAAC does not have enough buy-in from the City Council, and its budget has not increased in several years. Although investment is increasing, many programming timelines stretch into 2026–2028, meaning the public may not feel the full impact of this growth for several years.
Twentynine Palms, once culturally overshadowed by Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley, has asserted its own creative identity, anchored we hope in sustained investment, public engagement, and visible community benefit.
What we are witnessing is less a windfall and more a realignment: a recognition by state, regional, and local funders that rural arts matter, that culture workers should be paid, and that desert creatives provide more to the community than perhaps the City has recognized.
The next three years will tell us whether this surge is the start of a new era or a blip in the desert’s long cycle of drought and plenty.
Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Please note that we do not allow anonymous comments. Please be sure your first and last name is on your profile prior to commenting. Anonymous comments will be deleted.
Feel free to share this article!
Help us reach our 2025 goal of $10,000 in subscriptions! Upgrade to a paid subscription for just $5 per month or $50 per year.
Would you care to donate more than $100? Our Paypal account is up and running!
AHA Projects was the fiscal receiver for the Desert Trumpet from January 2024 - May 2025.