Thriving Tennessee Arts and Culture
By Hal Partlow, Associate Director of Grants –
The Commission’s fall quarterly meeting was held Wednesday, September 23 in Memphis. Each quarterly meeting, the staff reports to the Commission board on the agency’s activities since the last meeting. With the launch earlier this year of the 2015-18 strategic plan, Cultivating the Arts in Tennessee, each quarterly meeting has included a report on the Commission’s progress with the plan’s strategic goals.
Strategic plan goal 1, Thriving Tennessee Arts and Culture, was included this time around and reported that the Commission continues to provide support to the arts in TN through grants and strategic program initiatives, investing in arts and cultural assets across TN as an integral part of everyday life for Tennesseans. In fiscal year 2015, the agency awarded approximately 945 grants in 20 grant categories totaling $5.3M. These funds, including some non-recurring reserves, provided support for major cultural institutions and for hundreds of local organizations that contribute to the quality of life in TN communities. With a special focus on underserved areas, the Commission made investments in all of TN’s 95 counties for a second consecutive year.
Part of a Thriving Tennessee Arts and Culture includes preserving and promoting our state’s rich heritage, cultural diversity and folk arts. Through the identification and documentation of TN’s folk artists, community traditions and folklife practices, including those rooted in older traditions and those of more recent ethnic and immigrant communities, the Folklife program promotes awareness through grant investments, programmatic initiatives, and the launch of a Folklife website. The Latino and Immigrant Initiative goes beyond fieldwork to document Latino and immigrant tradition bearers, their calendar customs and community events in an effort to develop organizational sustainability and fundable traditional arts programming.
The Arts Commission is committed to expanding accessibility, participation, and inclusion in the arts for all Tennesseans. The existence of the Arts Access Program, as legislated by TN Code Annotated 4-20-104 & 107 provides that, among other duties, the agency is to “undertake to assure equitable participation by the traditionally underserved and underrepresented ethnic minority, people with a disability, elderly and rural artists and arts organizations”. Therefore, agency-wide activities and grant opportunities are strategically targeted to underserved communities. The increase of grant investments in this program area, the creation of a written Guide for Expanding Access to the Arts for Persons with Disabilities, the creation of A Guide to Development Opportunities for Visual and Performing Artists with Disabilities, a series of webinars focused on career development opportunities for artists, and other resources maintained on the Arts Access program page of the Commission’s website are evidence of the agency’s work toward fulfilling this objective.
The Commission continues to share best practices with the dissemination of information from national sources through various media platforms. Our current reach includes 1,500 subscribed newsletter recipients, an e-blast list consisting of constituents plus 2,600 additional recipients, 800 Twitter followers and 1,700 likes on Facebook. Tennessee recently offered 5 group viewings in cities across the state – Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Kingsport – of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) webinar Engaging Millennials: Creating Young Arts Advocates.
Staff continues to look for ways to streamline processes and improve efficiency in our effort to be a more effective state government agency.
