Attention, Pinellas artists: You have 15 days left to apply for grant money.
Last month, the nonprofit arts agency Creative Pinellas launched its first grants program for artists as well as nonprofit arts/cultural organizations. For each, the agency will award $50,000 in funding, with a $5,000 per-award maximum.
Creative Pinellas created the grant program to help sustain and retain local artists, and also to allow arts and cultural organizations to augment youth arts education programs, the agency said in a press release.
“We are very pleased to be able to roll out this program,” Executive Director Barbara St. Clair said in a press release. “In some ways it has been a long time in the making. At the same time we are calling the program ‘Rapid Returns’ because we put it together in less than 45 days."
St. Clair says the rapidity with which Creative Pinellas assembled the grant program stemmed from the organization's desire to have money available by this summer.
As a result, she said, Creative Pinellas created a streamlined process for applying. The online application has few steps and is straightforward and easily navigated.
The grants will come in the form of fellowships. Creative Pinellas will award grants for choreography, interdisciplinary, literature, media arts, music composition, theatre/musical theatre and visual arts. A peer panel will award these fellowships based on artistic excellence, impact and engagement of the artists and their work, and a record of professional activity and achievement.
As for the nonprofits, the grants will go to programs designed for "positive live arts experiences through quality arts instruction including but not limited to programs that reach historically underserved communities," the press release explained. As with the fellowships, a panel of peers will award the grants. The criteria for nonprofits includes impact, artistic merit and management, and financial capability of the organization.
“Our research shows that the creative community has been waiting for something like this,” Elizabeth Brincklow, Creative Pinellas' Community Engagement Director and head of the grants program, said. “I truly believe that supporting our local artists and supporting youth arts education programs will only elevate Pinellas County as an arts and culture-forward community and as an arts destination.”
Get the details and apply online at creativepinellas.org by March 18.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.