Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester Announces Community Arts Awards for 2004 in partnership with City of Rochester, Citibank, New York State Legislature, New York State Council on the Arts and Rochester Area Community Foundation
Grants in 6 County Area Totaling $137,088
February 26, 2004 Rochester, NY– The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester in partnership with the City of Rochester, Citibank, New York State Legislature, New York State Council on the Arts and Rochester Area Community Foundation today announced the 2004 Community Arts Grants. Grants totaling $137,088 will be made to 46 nonprofit organizations and artists from Monroe and surrounding counties. Community Arts Grants are funded by Rochester Area Community Foundation, City of Rochester and Citibank, N.A. and the New York State Legislature through the New York State Council on the Arts. [Complete list of grants attached]
“We are once again very grateful to the New York State Legislature, Rochester Area Community Foundation, and the City of Rochester and Citibank for making these awards possible,” said Arts Council President and CEO, Sarah E. Lentini. “This funding is essential to a vibrant and exciting cultural sector, which in turn is key to promoting our region.”
The grants are extremely competitive. Five panels of reviewers evaluated 97 applications. Each project is evaluated on criteria that include artistic merit, outreach to under-served urban and rural communities, and responsiveness to community cultural needs. The 2004 Community Arts Grants are awarded in five general categories:
ROCHESTER AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION-COMMUNITY ARTS FUND - $25,000 in funding awarded to 9 arts organizations. Funding for capacity-building projects for arts organizations with budgets under $400,000 in Monroe, Wayne, Ontario, Livingston, Genesee, or Orleans counties.
CITY OF ROCHESTER AND CITIBANK, N.A. - CULTURE BUILDS COMMUNITIES -- $35,000 in funding for 7 neighborhood resident groups to build community through participatory projects resulting in enduring neighborhood development projects with strong aesthetic qualities.
NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS (NYSCA) LOCAL CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVE- “EDUCATION THROUGH THE ARTS” – $5,088 in matching grants for five schools and cultural group partnerships. Each partnership will develop and implement new programming that integrates the study of arts with non-arts subjects.
NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS (NYSCA) DECENTRALIZATION FUND - $63,000 in funding for 21 nonprofit organizations arts-related projects or programs in all disciplines that serve Monroe County residents.
NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS (NYSCA) INDIVIDUAL ARTIST GRANTS- $9,000 distributed in four $2,250 grants to support individual artists with the development of new work that engages the community.
The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester administers all Community Arts Grants. This includes developing guidelines and evaluation criteria, promoting the availability of funding, counseling prospective applicants, and managing the review process.
The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester develops, promotes, and strengthens the cultural industry for the benefit of the people of the Rochester region.
Rochester Area Community Foundation is a permanent, community-based endowment that matches the philanthropic interests of donors with current community needs.
Citibank, N.A. has a longstanding commitment throughout New York State to strengthening communities through the arts.
The City of Rochester is providing opportunities to strengthen neighborhoods through the Neighbors Building Neighborhoods program and support of Culture Builds Communities.
The New York State Council on the Arts is dedicated to preserving and expanding the rich and diverse cultural resources that are and will become the heritage of New York’s citizens.
2004 COMMUNITY ARTS GRANTS
ROCHESTER AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION – COMMUNITY ARTS FUND
(9 grants totaling $25,000)
Organization Name: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Project Discipline: Literature Funding: $3,500
Project Summary: For hardware and software acquisition to enable BOA to replace its obsolete computer infrastructure. This reconfiguration will enable BOA’s three-person-staff to more efficiently complete many crucial administration, marketing and fundraising tasks.
Organization Name: The Commission Project, Inc.
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $5,000
Project Summary: For a twelve-month project to strengthen the fundraising, development, and communications abilities of The Commission Project’s staff and board of directors, and to create an integrated approach to fundraising and development.
Organization Name: Finger Lakes Camerata
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $1,000
Project Summary: To purchase three or four major works to expand their performance repertoire.
Organization Name: Gateways Music Festival
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $1,800
Project Summary: To enhance the Gateway Music Festival website in order to increase awareness of the organization.
Organization Name: Genesee Center for the Arts & Education
Project Discipline: Visual Art Funding: $5,000
Project Summary: For staff training on new database management system.
Organization Name: Golden Link Folk Singing Society, Inc.
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,000
Project Summary: To hire a sound technician with folk music expertise to consult on sound amplification at concerts and to improve wheel-chair accessible restroom facilities at Golden Link’s annual Turtle Hill Festival.
Organization Name: The Publick Musick, Inc.
Project Discipline: Music Funding $4,200
Project Summary: To develop a marketing communications plan that will raise awareness of the Publick Musick and significantly improve CD sales and concert bookings.
Organization Name: Rochester Opera Factory
Project Discipline: Opera Funding: $700
Project Summary: To purchase a laser printer-copier-scanner to keep pace with the organization’s growth and reduce time lost on an inadequate printing and copying system.
Organization Name: Wayne County Multicultural Arts Project, Inc.
Project Discipline: Multi-Disciplinary Funding: $1,800
Project Summary: To provide transportation for youth and migrant farm workers to attend arts activities and to provide permanent space for training and other programs.
CITY OF ROCHESTER AND CITIBANK, N.A. - CULTURE BUILDS COMMUNITES –
(7 grants totaling $35,000)
Organization Name: Rochester Food Not Bombs
Funding: $10,000
Artist: Krysia Mnick
Location: 367 Lyell Avenue
Project Summary: For a mural depicting the spirit of the food cupboard’s mission of distributing wholesome foods to the poor.
Organization Name: ARTWalk
Funding: $2,600
Location: University Avenue, between Atlantic Avenue and Elton Street.
Project Summary: For the ARTWalk Alive! Celebration, featuring dance, music, spoken word and visual art.
Organization Name: Wilson Commencement Park
Funding: $2,650
Artist: Wilson Commencement Park
Location: Wilson Commencement Park
Project Summary: For the creation of a mosaic display wall to be created with the assistance of children ages 5- 12 in the Early Learning Center program.
Organization Name: South Wedge Planning Committee (SWPC)
Funding: $5,000
Artist: Mark Johns, ASLA
Location: 62 Alexander Street
Project Summary: For the creation of a sculpture/artistic centerpiece for a revitalized community green space.
Organization Name: Writers and Books
Funding: $5,304
Location: 740 University Avenue
Project Summary: For an interactive “Poetry Booth” installation which will feature the work of Rochester-area poets.
Organization Name: Grove Place Association
Funding: $5,304
Artist: Bruce Zaretsky
Location: Corner of East Avenue and Broadway
Project Summary: For an aesthetic component to the construction of a neighborhood park.
Organization Name: Francis Parker School #23
Funding: $4,142
Artist: Dexter Benedict
Location: Francis Parker School, 170 Barrington Street
Project Summary: To create and install four additional student-designed sculptures into the student sculpture garden.
NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS (NYSCA) LOCAL CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVE- “EDUCATION THROUGH THE ARTS”
(5 grants totaling $5,088)
Organization Name: Frank Fowler Dow, School #52
Discipline: Performing Arts Funding: $793
Project description: The focus of this project is to increase children’s awareness in grades K-5 of the performing arts as a method to learn appropriate behavior as an audience; to increase children’s ability to verbalize and process conflict resolution techniques with their peers in grades 4 & 5; to increase peer mediators’ effectiveness in resolving conflict.
Organization Name: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., School #9
Discipline: Theatre Funding: $975
Project description: The purpose of this project is to provide 3rd graders with an in-depth exploration, examination, and appreciation of the art of storytelling in its historical, cultural and educational contexts. Students will be able to visualize, and interpret Aesop Fables. NYS Learning Standards in both English and Art will be addressed.
Organization Name: Monroe #1 BOCES
Discipline: Performance/Visual Art Funding: $800
Project description: The purpose of the “Telling the Pictures” project is to expand and enhance the existing English Language Arts curriculum by helping beginning writers with their reading, writing, and listening skills through the art of storytelling. The tradition of storytelling is linked to modern technology. The “Telling the Pictures” project helps beginning writers to create stories by describing memories to listeners, who draw out details and shape the structure of what they have heard.
Organization Name: Writers and Books
Discipline: Literature Funding: $1,000
Project description: This project expands and deepens the existing successful common book reading program in elementary schools by adding living author visits and by adapting successful creative writing residency programs. Students will learn and practice the process and methods of literary artists and understand the standards of successful literary art. NYS Learning Standards in both English and Art will be addressed.
Organization Name: Writers and Books
Discipline: Literature Funding: $1,520
Project description: A writer and a naturalist will work with a Bioscience specialist, an English Language Arts specialist, Social Studies Curriculum specialist and students to create a curriculum for urban middle school students to explore their natural and socially-constructed worlds, beginning with the role of the Genesee River Valley geology and ecology, and the impact of indigenous and pioneer settlement and subsequent development. The students will be taught a journaling process of recording observations and questions, and then working them up into scientific and social hypotheses, and fictional or poetic conjectures.
NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS – DECENTRALIZATION PROGRAM
(21 grants totaling $63,000)
Organization Name: Antiga and Barbuda Partners of the Americas
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $3,500
For a cultural exchange among young Caribbean steel drum musicians and dancers with their Rochester counterparts to collaborate on styles, compositions, arrangements and technique, and to provide three public performances.
Organization Name: Asian/Pacific Islander/American History Project
Project Discipline: Visual Art Funding: $4,800
To support a community-wide celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (May 2004) that includes the second annual Asian Pacific American film series and adds a photographic exhibition of both amateur and professional photographers.
Organization Name: Brighton Symphony Orchestra
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,700
To perform a series of ten orchestral concerts in celebration of the Brighton Symphony Orchestra’s 30th anniversary at accessible sites in Monroe County. Two concerts will be in combination with the RIT Philharmonia.
Organization Name: Brockport Integrated Service Clubs Organization (B.I.S.C.O)
Project Discipline: Multi-Disciplinary Funding: $3,000
To support the 7th year of “Cool Kids in the Park,” a series of summer events with participatory art activities for families in western Monroe County.
Organization Name: Colleen Hendrick Dance Theater, Inc.
Project Discipline: Dance Funding: $4,300
For a three-month series of dance/movement concerts featuring local dance companies that will offer the general public opportunities to view diverse, high-quality performance at an informal venue.
Organization Name: Elizabeth Clark Dance Ensemble
Project Discipline: Dance Funding: $2,500
To support for for concerts in new locations as a way to expand the Elizabeth Clark Dance Ensemble’s reach and audience.
Organization Name: Feadan Or Pipe Band
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,500
To support a public, 2-hour concert featuring vocal, choral, and instrumental interpretations of Celtic folksong. The concert will feature Jim Malcolm, premier singer of Scots-English folk songs, who will be touring in the United States at the time of the concert.
Organization Name: First Community Interfaith Institute, Inc.
Project Discipline: Multi-Disciplinary Funding: $1,000
To host the Kwanzaa/First Fruits Showcase 2004 during the month of December. The showcase will offer participatory workshops on African dance, African druming, and story telling as well as two music concerts, and art exhibition, a photography exhibition, a step dance show and a poetry recital.
Organization Name: Genesee Center for the Arts and Education
Project Discipline: Visual Art Funding: $3,500
For two multi-disciplinary arts programs that serve urban youth who benefit from a hands-on, tactile approach to learning, academic skill development and the formation of positive connections with their community.
Organization Name: Golden Link Folk Singing Society, Inc.
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $1,200
The Balkan women’s chorus, Sladki Doumi, and the Balkan band, Karamfil, will perform at Golden Link’s annual Turtle Hill Folk Festival. Balkan music events will include a formal concert presentation and at least three interactive workshops to bring Balkan music, its techniques, and its cultural context to festival-goers.
Organization Name: Greece Performing Arts Society
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,500
Support will provide a stronger season and increased community visibility for the Greece Summer Theatre as a component of the Greece Performing Arts Society.
Organization Name: Hallmark Danceworks
Project Discipline: Dance Funding: $3,100
In May 2004, Hallmark Danceworks will produce a thought-provoking, contemporary dance concert resulting from collaboration among local artists, a guest artist from Washington, D.C., and faculty of Eastman School of Music and Hobart/William Smith College.
Organization Name: Ibero-American Action League, Inc.
Project Discipline: Multi-Disciplinary Funding: $3,500
To sponsor a two-day music, dance and cultural conference, consisting of an evening performance and workshops on dance and drumming and a youth cultural program, hosted by The Movidá Dance company. These activities will take place at a community school. Other local dance and music groups will be invited to participate.
Organization Name: Musica Spei, Inc.
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,900
To commission a modern edition of a set of mass “Propers” from the monumental and legendary “Choralis Constantinus” by Heinrich Isaac, and to introduce the work in public concerts.
Organization Name: Off-Monroe Players, Inc.
Project Discipline: Theater Funding: $2,900
To produce “A Gilbert and Sullivan Christman Carol,” which has never been seen in the Rochester area, during the December 2004 holiday season.
Organization Name: Our Lady of Mercy Church
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,000
For Air de Cour’s regular concert series, featuring performances of music from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Four concerts have been planned and will be held at various venues.
Organization Name: Race and Reconciliation, Inc.
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $4,800
To support three concerts of folk, gospel and classical music, “Our People, Many Traditions: A Concert Celebrating the African and European Heritages.” The concerts demonstrate the influences of African and European musical heritages on American musical tradition.
Organization Name: Rochester Community Players, Inc.
Project Discipline: Theater Funding: $3,000
To support the summer 2004 season of free performances at the Highland Park Bowl, including ten performances of King Lear, produced by the Shakespeare Players (the classical theater program of Rochester Community Players) and six family-oriented film programs.
Organization Name: Rochester Flute Association
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,000
To support a two-day residency of flutist and composer, Robert Dick. A free public performance will be presented in addition to workshops and master classes.
Organization Name: Rochester Opera Factory
Project Discipline: Opera Funding: $4,800
To present a fully staged, costumed and orchestrated production of a complete opera in original language in November 2004. The production furthers Rochester Opera Factory goals to educate the community about opera and to give local non-professional musicians the opportunity to perform and improve.
Organization Name: Third Presbyterian Church
Project Discipline: Music Funding: $2,500
To support a neighborhood arts academy with year-round classes in music and visual arts for youth from School 35 and from low-income families in the Upper Monroe and Swillburg neighborhoods.
INDIVIDUAL ARTIST GRANTS
(4 grants of $2,250, totaling $9,000)
Artist Name: Thomas J. Folan
Project Title: J.S. Bach's Lutheran Masses
Project Summary: Thomas Folan will record J. S. Bach’s “Lutheran Masses,” capping a comprehensive study and performance of these works by Folan and The Publick Musick under the auspices of the Rochester Bach Festival. This project deepens the cooperation between organisations that comprise an important segment of Rochester’s classical music community.
Artist Name: Reenah Golden-Collier
Project Title: Revelations from the Single Mama Tribe
Project Summary: To support a creative work documenting the artist’s journey from single mother to married mother with an attempt to capture and articulate the bond shared between single mothers. The work will be fiction and non-fiction with poems and prose interwoven throughout.
Artist Name: Douglas Holleley
Project Title: Reading the Gallery
Project Summary: To photograph, examine and reinterpret artworks held by the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, N.Y., through a process the artists calls “interactive reading.” There will be an exhibtion at the Gallery, and a symposium, open to the public, to debate and discuss museum and photographic practice and their effects on the interpretation of the collection.
Artist Name: John Kastner
Project Summary: To reproduce images, themes and scenarios developed in small graphic scale in a painterly manner onto a large canvas. The work will be done in a public space, the Monroe Avenue Branch of YMCA, with discussion encouraged from YMCA users.
