What: Shasta Regional Community Foundation announces two upcoming arts grant opportunities
When: Deadlines for letters of intent are Aug. 14 and Aug. 31
“We believe arts play a key role in building our communities; providing focus for, reflecting, and celebrating local culture.” Beth Freeman, program director at the foundation, said about the important role of the arts in the quality of community life and the way residents feel about and choose the places they live.
“The Knight Foundation recently completed a 3-year, 26 community study, ‘Soul of the Community,’ which demonstrated a strong connection between social offerings, including the arts, and how attached people are to their communities. The arts are a key determinant in people’s decisions about where they’re going to live. We, at the Community Foundation, are also appreciative of the importance of literacy (for adults and well as children), and of literature; of reading for pleasure and understanding.”
With this initiative, supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation, the Community Foundation is making funding available to support artists, arts organizations, and other community-based nonprofit organizations to create works of public art: playing with words, memorializing inspirational writing (historic or contemporary), celebrating reading and writing.
“We envision these works as not only playful or inspirational, but reinforcing the value of reading, and helping to define places of community interest and pride. In other words, we anticipate verbal messages in these works, we also envision a strong non-verbal message about how our communities value and respect reading, literature, and literacy.”
Deadline for letters of intent is August 14, 2011, and may be postmarked or delivered.
The Community Foundation is simultaneously repeating an opportunity for local artists and for nonprofit organizations to apply for grants for more broadly focused arts projects or for youth arts. Deadline for proposals is August 31, 2011, and proposals may be postmarked or delivered.
The guidelines for the literacy/literary focused public arts grants as well as the more general arts opportunities are available on the foundation’s website: www.shastarcf.org.
These grants are made possible by The James Irvine Foundation, which is providing Shasta Regional Community Foundation with funds for the arts in a 1:1 match to donations from the community to build an arts endowment at the foundation. For more information about the grants or the endowment, contact Beth Freeman at 244-1219.
The Shasta Regional Community Foundation is a resource building organization in Shasta and Siskiyou Counties dedicated to meeting community needs through philanthropy, education and information. Since 2000, the Community Foundation has awarded more than $9,000,000 in grants to area nonprofit organizations. For more information, call the Shasta Regional Community Foundation at (530)244-1219 or visit www.shastarcf.org.
-from press release
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