What's New

SMAHC
Southwest Minnesota Arts and Humanities Council

What’s New At SMAHC
May, 2010

SMAHC has been very busy launching our new programs through the Arts and Cultural Heritage funds. As probably everyone knows, the State of Minnesota by the vote of the people on November 4, 2008 has designated a new sales tax to be used for Outdoor Heritage, Clean Water, Parks and Trails, and, of course, Arts and Cultural Heritage. The increased sales tax of three-eighths of one percentage point will greatly enhance the arts in Minnesota. The amendment stipulates that the sales tax will last for the next 25 years until 2034.

SMAHC has already received a portion of the Arts and Cultural Heritage fund, and we have had our first round of grants awarded under that program. There are 2 more rounds under the Legacy Funds program yet this fiscal year. The deadlines have passed for these rounds.

*** Under the new Legacy Grants for Organizations and Communities and the Legacy Grants for Individual Artists, we have received 59 requests totaling $670,601. Under these 2 new programs, we are projecting the grant awards will total $279,986.

We have been working on developing grant guidelines and application forms for Legacy Grants for Organizations and Communities and Legacy Grants for Individual Artists. You can read more about these grant opportunities on the SMAHC website (www.smahc.org/legacy_grants.htm). In conjunction with that, we have busy getting the word out on these new Legacy Grant programs. We conducted 13 Legacy grant workshops at 8 locations in Ortonville, Willmar, Hutchinson, Marshall, Worthington, Montevideo, Luverne and Pipestone in February and April. These were attended by 155 people.

We have hired Nicole DeBoer, our new Program Assistant to help manage the various grant programs as well as helping with conferences and workshops and other special events. Nicole is highly qualified and will no doubt be a great asset to SMAHC.

In our new office space (the same building as before), we now have room to have an art gallery. We are hosting our first art exhibition which will be on display until June 30th. We invite you to come and see the exhibit.

We have, of course, been awarding grants in our other grant programs the last several months including Art Project grants, Local Arts Development grants, Individual Artist grants, and Challenge Grants.

*** As we look at SMAHC Fiscal Year 2010 as a whole, we have received 163 requests totaling $898,870 as compared to 132 requests for $230,108 last fiscal year. And we are projecting grant awards of about $470,000 this fiscal year. That compares to $174,733 in grant awards last fiscal year.

Also in this issue, we have our other standby features such as the Gallery Listing, Calendar of Events and Opportunities (pages 4-6) We thank everyone who has supported SMAHC with their membership contributions over the last several months. These are exciting times for the arts in SW MN.