BRATTLEBORO — The Arts Council of Windham County (ACWC) recently announced the award of $15,000 through the Brattleboro Town Arts Fund to support six community-focused creative initiatives.
The six grantees were selected from a competitive field of 39 proposals received in this first year of the Town Arts Fund program.
“The number of worthy projects applying for funding attests to the wealth of creative energy in the Brattleboro community,” ACWC Board Chair Sharon Fantl said in a news release. “This process gives us a real glimpse of what is possible in the community and the kinds of powerful ideas and collaborations that can be realized when an opportunity like this is made accessible.”
The mission of the Fund is to promote “the development and presentation of creative projects that contribute positively to the greater community and to the vibrancy and diversity of Brattleboro's arts and cultural landscape.”
Grantees for this first cycle of the Town Arts Fund were selected by an eight-member panel reflecting a range of community perspectives, including representatives from local businesses, social services, residents, local artists/cultural organizers, the town, ACWC, and the TAF advisory committee.
The 2020 TAF grantees include:
• Animating Adoption: Multimedia artist Jo Dery and clinical social worker/psychotherapist Tamara Evanson, both adoptive parents, will work with a group Brattleboro-area children adopted through the foster care system to create a short, animated film.
The project promotes individual, familial, and communal healing through storytelling. A series of animation workshops will culminate in a public film screening and sharing of the film as an outreach tool for the Vermont Department of Children and Families, the Vermont Adoption Consortium, and Lund, a nonprofit adoption agency.
• The Rural LGBTQ Voices Project: This collaborative project documents LGBTQ histories in Brattleboro and Southern Vermont to create connections and inclusive community histories among generations of community members.
Out in the Open - in collaboration with Keene State College, Last Call oral history project, and Sandglass Theater - will conduct oral history interviews with Brattleboro LGBTQ and allied activists, host community events, and produce a digital archive of interviews, podcast series, and live performance that voices and honors these stories.
• 120 Birge Street Arts and Friends Collective: Founded in 2019, it is a consensus-driven group united in their common need for safe and accessible creative and community space.
TAF support will enable a capacity-building investment in AV equipment to expand the collective's community engagement and performance programming - including shows, events, and workshops that showcase local creativity and projects.
• The Brattleboro Faces Project: This is an ongoing series of portraits by photographer Ezra Distler that shed a loving and inclusive light on all members of our community.
TAF support will allow the project to expand into new work focusing on homeless and at-risk members of our community. Distler has already photographed well over 10 percent of the Brattleboro community through this project.
• Art for Social Change: This program of the River Gallery School of Art provides free art classes and workshops to marginalized community members.
TAF support will enable the program to expand class offerings, work with youth at Snow Block apartments to create artwork for their communal living space, and offer an art workshop for participants of the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program.
River Gallery School is a community-based art school that provides space in which students of all ages can explore creativity through the practice of making art.
• Water Way(s): This is a multifaceted art-making and educational experience centered around the Whetstone Brook in the heart of West Brattleboro. The project will engage the community in a series of site-based events in June that will explore how humans might successfully co-evolve with the Whetstone.
The project, which integrates Indigenous knowledge, environmental education, and oral histories, is a partnership between the Human Connection Project, Brattleboro Housing Partnerships, Vermont teaching artists, Connecticut River Conservancy, Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center, Academy School, and Vermont River Conservancy.
The 2020 TAF selection panelists included Martin Cohn, Cohn Public Relations; Zon Eastes, member of TAF advisory committee; Madeline Fan, independent artist; Sue Fillion, planning director for the Town of Brattleboro; Victoria Heisler, ACWC board member and executive director of In-Sight Photography Project; Desmond Peeples, communications director for Brattleboro Words Project; Jon Potter, executive director of Latchis Arts; and Emily Zervas, library director at Putney Public Library.
Town funding for TAF was first proposed at the 2019 Representative Town Meeting. A community working group developed the TAF application process and guidelines, which was unanimously approved by the Brattleboro Selectboard in August 2019.
The inaugural TAF application cycle opened in November 2019. ACWC, with support from the TAF advisory committee, is responsible for administration of the Fund, the application process, and project oversight.
The TAF advisory committee, composed of artists, teachers, arts administrators, and other community members, has steered TAF through its creation process and will continue to provide guidance in the program's implementation and future direction.
The advisory committee is driven by the belief that public funding for the arts will enhance an already rich cultural landscape in Brattleboro, and that creative and collaborative projects can advance a wide array of community quality-of-life goals.
Those interested in getting involved with the advisory committee can contact [email protected].
ACWC will be hosting a Town Arts Fund Celebration on Wednesday, March 25, from 5 to 7 p.m., at A Vermont Table (22-26 High St.). The event will be open to the public, and will be an opportunity to celebrate the TAF grantees as well as the range of creative proposals received this year.