The Northwest Connecticut Arts Council is pleased to announce they have been selected to receive an American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic. The Arts Council is receiving $150,000 and will use this funding to distribute grants in their community to eligible recipients to save jobs and to fund operations and facilities, health and safety supplies, and marketing and promotional efforts to encourage attendance and participation. In total, the NEA will award grants totaling $20,200,000 to 66 local arts agencies nationwide for subgranting. 

“The NEA’s significant investment in local arts agencies, including Northwest Connecticut Arts Council is a key element in helping the arts and culture sector recover and reopen, while ensuring that that American Rescue Plan funding is distributed equitably,” said Ann Eilers, NEA’s acting chair. “These grants recognize the vital role of local arts agencies and will allow them to help rebuild local economies and contribute to the well-being of our communities.”

The funds allocated to Northwest CT will be used to provide subgrants of $2,500 - $5,000 to eligible organizations in the Arts Council’s 25 town service area.  Organizations will be able to use the grants for general operating support to help recover from the effects of the pandemic.  The grants will also be open for teaching artists to work with local social service organizations.  The Arts Council aims to award funding to 25-40 recipients.

“We are so grateful that our region has been recommended for this supplemental funding.  As a rural region, there is very little infrastructure in place to support allocating funding to the arts from a municipal level,” explains Steph Burr, Executive Director of the Northwest Connecticut Arts Council. “This funding will help ensure that our arts and humanities sectors receive sufficient recovery support.” 

The NWCT Arts Council is one of the 8 Designated Regional Service Organizations for the CT Office of the Arts. “The Office of the Arts is so proud of the excellent work that the Northwest Connecticut Arts Council has been doing to promote the arts, the arts organizations and the artists in northwest Connecticut,” said Liz Shapiro, Director of Arts, Preservation and Museums at the Connecticut Office of the Arts and State Historic Preservation Office. “This funding was fiercely competitive, and I could not be happier that their excellent work has been nationally recognized. I’m eagerly anticipating the great creative work to come.”

This is the second of three installments of the NEA’s American Rescue Plan funding. Last April, the NEA announced that 40 percent of its $135 million in ARP funding would be allocated to 62 state, jurisdictional, and regional arts organizations for regranting through their respective programs. The third installment of APR funding to arts organizations to support their own operations will be announced in early 2022. 

For more information on the NEA’s American Rescue Plan grants, including the full list of local arts agencies funded in this announcement, visit www.arts.gov/COVID-19/the-american-rescue-plan.