DEPARTMENT: Department for Culture and Creative Development
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Felix N. Padrón
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Council District 2
SUBJECT:
EastPoint Artist Residencies Our Town Grant, in the amount of $100,000, from the National Endowment for the Arts.
SUMMARY:
This ordinance authorizes the acceptance of a grant award from the National Endowment for the Arts in the amount of $100,000, for the period of October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2017. The City’s Department for Culture and Creative Development (DCCD), in accordance with the Office of EastPoint, is partnering with the United Way Eastside Promise Area for City/Bexar County, a non-profit entity, to provide artist residencies in the EastPoint Promise Zone that will include community engagement and public art activities that utilize creative placemaking techniques that build communities and restore civic pride through the arts.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The City of San Antonio’s eastside was a recipient of a federal Choice Neighborhood grant in 2012 awarded to the San Antonio Housing Authority, and in January 2014 it was designated as a Promise Zone by President Barack Obama. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation. The NEA offers the Our Town Creative Placemaking grant program to support projects that help to transform communities into lively, beautiful, and resilient places with the arts at their core. In 2014, DCCD partnered with the Office of EastPoint and the United Way Eastside Promise Area for City/Bexar County for consideration of the Eastside Promise Zone Artists Residencies project, which include arts engagement, cultural planning, and design projects. The NEA has recommended funding the amount of $100,000 from the Our Town grant program.
The Our Town Grant program has proven successful in transforming communities through creative placemaking. Creative placemaking is when artists, arts organizations, and community development practitioners deliberately integrate arts and culture into community revitalization work - placing arts at the table with land-use, transportation, economic development, education, housing, infrastructure, and public safety strategies.
ISSUE:
This grant will fund project activities that include a series of educational, informative workshops that will serve as community engagement phase and bring local and visiting artists and planners together to discuss community-based public art projects that transform and revitalize communities. This phase will be followed by three public artist residencies within the Eastside Promise Zone neighborhood. As lead applicant, DCCD has been notified by the NEA indicating their recommendation to approve the Eastside Promise Zone Artist Residencies grant proposal as part of 2015 Our Town recommended grant funding.
ALTERNATIVES:
An alternative would be for the city to take no action, resulting in challenges in integrating arts and culture into revitalization efforts underway in the Eastside Promise Zone initiative.
FISCAL IMPACT:
Funding for the grant cash match is available through the annual public art allocations authorized under the 2012-2017 Bond Program.
RECOMMENDATION:
Based on the information provided above, staff recommends approval.