A program for TCG member theatres that supports creative thinking and action in two ways: Think It grants (up to $25,000) give theatre professionals the time and space for research and development, Do It grants (up to $50,000) support the implementation and testing of new ideas.

The Yolanda Garcia Community Planner Award (YGCP) acknowledges the hard-working leaders of grassroots, community-based planning. The award was created to commemorate Yolanda Garcia, a community activist in the South Bronx (seen at work in the photo at left). Under Garcia’s leadership, the residents of Melrose challenged the city, created an alternative to an urban renewal plan, and transformed a neighborhood. The organization created by Garcia, We Stay/Nos Quedamos, is bringing that community’s vision to life through planning, design, construction, and programming.

San Jose is one of the most diverse cities in the nation, with no majority population group - a prediction made for most urban areas in the US by the year 2050.  In a city as large as San Jose, residents often times do not know one another.  Thus, MACLA has made it one of their missions is to communicate and reach out to the neighborhoods of San Jose to enable diverse constituents of the city to come together.  One of their initiatives is to work with small businesses, and Singh's Laundromat, located nearby MACLA, is one of them. The Laundromat was in poor shape; litter, drug dealers, prostitutes and similar personas were often found loitering outside, creating an unsafe and uncomfortable environment for those seeking to use neighborhood facilities.  MACLA worked with the laundromat's owner to improve the small business and turn it into a community gathering place by enlisting a film screening during daytime hours.

Nestled at the northwestern corner of the city, just adjacent to the Delaware River and covering approximately a ten block area, is a neighborhood of about 1,000 or so families that is facing a particularly intense level of new development.  An area of mostly poor Latino families with school-aged children and elderly African Americans, the neighborhood boasts two of the city's larger K through 8th elementary schools, an unusually high number of rooming houses and abandoned housing, and the Riverfront State Prison. Recently, maneuvering has begun between the state and a multi-national oil company to take the small island located just a few hundred yards off the river's edge of this neighborhood to make it either a haven for luxury homes with a golf course, or a nature preserve.  Either scenario for the island will have a lasting and potential harmful impact for this neighborhood.