Arts and Humanities Council Offers Cultural Grants in Wheaton
The Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County is launching a cultural arts grants program with an aim at invigorating the Wheaton Arts and Entertainment District here.
The Wheaton Cultural Grants is a new funding opportunity that will support creative and cultural projects in Wheaton. This recently created grant category is funded by Montgomery County which provided over $5.5 million in funds for local arts and culture, including a special $90,000 allocation for the Wheaton Cultural Grants.
Nonprofit arts and humanities organizations and individual artists and scholars are invited to apply for grants of up to $10,000 for Wheaton cultural projects. To be eligible for these grants, applicants must be based in Montgomery County and proposed projects must take place in Wheaton between May 15, 2015 and June 30, 2016. The application deadline for this opportunity is Thursday, April 9th 2015.
“Wheaton Cultural Grants will contribute to the cultural life of the residents of Wheaton through support of cultural projects in all disciplines, genres and styles,” says Suzan Jenkins, AHCMC CEO. “This new funding opportunity helps AHCMC build capacity within Montgomery County’s arts and humanities community and, given the great diversity that we see in Wheaton, also helps advance a very important conversation about inclusion and equity in the arts.”
There are three Arts and Entertainment Districts in Montgomery County – Bethesda, Silver Spring and Wheaton. Comprised of a diverse community of people and businesses with more than 33% of residents being foreign born, Wheaton is the least developed of the three AEDs, Jenkins told MyMCMedia.
According to the Census, residents in Wheaton are 25% African American, 14% Hispanic, and 12% Asian.
“The activation of the arts and humanities in Wheaton will activate the Wheaton AED; highlight and engage the minority and immigrant arts community/cultural sector in Wheaton; increase the visibility, capacity and economy of a traditionally underserved creative and cultural sector; encourage cultural engagement, cooperation across sectors, and a shared sense of unique community identity and hopefully, convert vacant sites into performance and exhibition sites that deter potential blight and crime,” Jenkins said.
To help interested parties apply for these new grants, the Arts and Humanities Council will be hosting a series of free grant preparation webinars and workshops between Feb. 24th and Feb. 26th. The public may register for these events and view the complete Wheaton Cultural Grants Guidelines, at www.creativemoco.com.
“We don’t want to be prescriptive and hope to see projects with focuses on dance; folk and traditional arts; historical, critical or theoretical approaches to the arts; history or social sciences; languages, linguistics and literary analysis; media arts; music; philosophy, ethics or comparative religion; storytelling; theater; writing and visual art,” Jenkins said.
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