Cultural Council Awards $55,000 in Grants to Local Cultural Programs
Photo: Amherst Cultural Council
The Amherst Cultural Council announced this week that it will make 62 grants totaling $54,822, for cultural programs in Amherst and the region. Proposals for music and theater events, visual artists, and programs featuring the natural environment were supported.
Grant recipients represent a broad range of organizations and institutions. The two largest grants of $3,000 apiece went to the Black Business Association of Amherst Area for their Still We Rise: Black Celebration Series, and, to the Center for Human Development for their All In! End-of-Year Recital. Grants of $2,000 or more went to the Downtown Amherst Foundation in collaboration with Amherst Regional High School to support arts programming at the Drake; to Restless Books to support an Amherst Immigrant Writing Workshop / Translating Emily Dickinson’s Poetry with Children; to Ancestral Bridges Foundation Reclaiming Our Narrative: Blacks and Indigenous in Amherst since 1776; and to Silverthorne Theater Company, which is staging its entire 2024 season at Hampshire College this year.
A full listing of all grants can be seen at the Amherst Cultural Council’s home page: https://www.amherstma.gov/1221/Cultural-Council.
State Representative Mindy Domb (D-Amherst) commented, “I am so excited by this year’s allocations by the Amherst Cultural Council and the diverse and extensive list of 63 recipients who received funding. Once again, the time and efforts of the council’s members, led by co-chairs Matt Holloway and Julianne Applegate, have resulted in expanded and enhanced arts and cultural programming in our town and region. Their decisions distribute the state allocation of $54,822 for Amherst to over 60 groups, events and artists and help to ensure that our community has a variety of programs to enjoy and participate in. The results of their efforts directly support these individuals and groups and contribute to the strengthen and vibrancy of our community.”
Decisions about which activities to support are made at the community level by a board of municipally appointed volunteers. The members of the Cultural Council are: Matt Holloway and Julianne Applegate (Co-Chairs), Eleanor Walsh (Secretary), Rachel Wang, Cody Rooney, Sylvie Wolff, Christy Gallagher, and Kimberly Manyanga. Find an overview of the grant making process here.
The Amherst Cultural Council is part of a network of 329 Local Cultural Councils (LCC) serving all 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. The LCC Program is the largest grassroots cultural funding network in the nation, supporting thousands of community-based projects in the arts, sciences, and humanities every year. The state legislature provides an annual appropriation to the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency, which then allocates funds to each community.
Statewide, more than $3.3 million will be distributed by local cultural councils in 2024. Grants will support an enormous range of grass-roots activities: concerts, exhibitions, radio productions, video productions, field trips for schoolchildren, after-school youth programs, writing workshops, historical preservation efforts, lectures, First Night celebrations, nature/science education programs for families, and town festivals. Nearly half of LCC funds support educational activities for young people. For more information on the program, visit Mass-culture.org. A new grant cycle will begin in early September with a deadline for applications in mid-October.
The Amherst Cultural Council is also pleased to announce, in conjunction with the Amherst Business Improvement District (BID), a Showcase Stage at this year’s Fall Amherst Block Party. In addition to awarding grants, each cultural council may also dedicate a percentage of its funding to local cultural activities that respond to cultural needs that are not otherwise being addressed in the community or that support the council’s local priorities. The Amherst Cultural Council has also created a “public” Google Calendar to share information about cultural events occurring in and around Amherst.. To subscribe to this calendar, click here. (Note that subscription to the calendar requires a Gmail account. The calendar may be viewed publicly without requiring a Gmail account click here.)