The St. Johns Cultural Council has been approved for a $60,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support a new local program, Arts for All. The program will provide funding for individual artists and cultural organizations in St. Johns County to create new works of art and expand programming to reach new audiences. The Cultural Council is among 1,130 project organizations nationwide that have received more than $31 million during a second round of Grants for Arts Projects assistance in the fiscal year 2023.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to support a wide range of projects including the St. Johns Cultural Council’s Arts for All grant. The funding helps to enrich many lives through the arts, and contribute to healthy and thriving communities,” said Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, NEA Chair. “St. Johns Cultural Council joins additional nationwide organizations with an important role to advance creative vitality and help ensure that people can benefit from arts, culture, and design.”
According to Christina Parrish Stone, St. Johns Cultural Council’s Executive Director, the Cultural Council has administered a number of grant programs to support individual artists and cultural organizations since its founding in 1999 including St. Johns County’s Tourist Development Council Arts, Culture, and Heritage grants.
“Sources of financial support for projects not strongly related to tourism have been limited. Three years ago, working with the Council’s Associate Director and Grants Administrator Brenda Swann, we began to diligently seek new sources of funding for truly local projects,” said Parrish Stone. “We are delighted to be selected for the NEA Grants for Arts Projects award and will invest 100 percent of the funding into our cultural community,” she said. “We plan to expand the grant program with support from other sources including revenue from Cultural Council events and individual donations.”
Arts for All will provide grants of up to $10,000 for organizations with revenues of less than $200,000 per year and up to $5,000 for individual artists to fund art projects of any discipline. The goal of the program is to improve funding for arts programming that will primarily benefit St. Johns County residents. Additional information about the Arts for All grants will be available through the Cultural Council website and its weekly Local Arts newsletter: subscribe here.
For more information about the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
