The Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis will award nearly $4.5 million in grants to 350 artists, organizations and arts programs.
The funding, which RAC’s leaders announced Wednesday and described as one of the largest grant allocations in its history, should be a boost to people working in a field that has suffered economically during the coronavirus pandemic.
The latest package of grants follows three years of significantly diminished funding and roughly quadruples RAC’s 2022 disbursement of $1.15 million.
“This is like experiencing a miracle. I am so proud of the work that RAC has done to ensure that we not only survive but we thrive. We know the importance of the work that the artists and arts organizations are doing,” said RAC President and CEO Vanessa Cooksey, announcing the grants to a gathering of arts advocates at Central Printing in the Old North neighborhood.
The increase in funding follows another dose of help for arts organizations that have struggled financially during the pandemic: The St. Louis Board of Aldermen voted in November to direct $10.6 million in federal pandemic relief funds for RAC to distribute to organizations in the city. The St. Louis County Council rejected an effort to devote some of the county’s pandemic funds in similar fashion.
RAC leaders intend to distribute about 80% of its federal money this year and must distribute the rest by 2026.
RAC is mostly funded by an accommodations tax on visitors to hotels and motels in St. Louis. Those tax dollars have grown scarcer following a decrease in tourism to the region during the pandemic. RAC leaders recently announced a strategy shift to take an active role in promoting tourism to the region, advertising St. Louis in nearby markets and sponsoring events that are known to draw tourists.
“We need more heads in beds,” Cooksey said.
Some RAC grants go toward organizations’ general operating budgets, some fund specific programs, and others go directly to artists. Awards in this round of funding include $15,000 to the National Blues Museum for its summertime Blues on the Block concert series, $4,164 to Noble Neighbor to fund book donations for 200 children and an author’s visit, and $7,500 to playwright Jacob Juntunen to develop a new play about processing pandemic grief.
Leaders of the Hispanic Festival, which has no full-time staff, will use a $15,000 grant to expand its musical offerings this year from two or three local bands to as many as five.
“That’s huge for us,” festival board member Elisa Bender said. “It’s about celebrating and bringing together the community, because music, dance and food is kind of ingrained in our culture, and so many of the Hispanic community are artists in some way or fashion.”
Recipients of grants announced Wednesday will put the funding to work in tangible ways, but the times remain challenging for many artists and arts organizations.
Pandemic-era legal restrictions on public gatherings are a thing of the past, and many arts organizations have dropped safety precautions that curbed their revenue in recent years, such as limiting attendance and providing for social distancing at performances. But the arts sector is grappling with a changed environment in which some longtime supporters have died and others remain reluctant to attend crowded events, with online streaming from home an ever-more attractive option for many potential audience members. Some longtime funders have also shifted their financial commitments from the arts to other causes.
The continuing risk posed by the coronavirus also means many arts events remain subject to abrupt cancellations and require more effort and expense behind the scenes to protect the health of artists and other workers. Even nonprofit arts organizations on relatively firm financial footing tend to depend on revenue from every scheduled event in order to stay on budget.
Multidisciplinary artist Dannie S. Boyd will put a $4,400 grant toward a laptop and audio equipment to help him present photography documenting life in Ferguson and elsewhere in north county.
“There is a lot of power in my own story, outside of being an artist but also just being a citizen of St. Louis. And so having the grant will allow me to amplify that story in any shape or form that it needs to be told in,” Boyd said.
Lilley Halloran contributed to this report.
