Published: January 1, 2011
Creating Opportunities for the Arts, Artists, and Audiences of Tompkins County

Each year, Tompkins County's arts
council administers five grant programs,
three of which are funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).
For 2011, the NYSCA funded programs resulted in the grants for nearly 40
different projects, with a total of $52,000 awarded to local artists and arts organizations,
schools and other local not-for-profits. "From dance, music, and theatre to poetry,
painting, and sculpture, these grants allow Tompkins County residents to experience
a truly amazing range of events," says CAP Executive Director, Brett Bossard.
"Thanks to NYSCA's support, we've been able to award more than $850,000 over
the past 20 years with just these three programs alone."
The three programs-Grants for Arts Programs, Artists in Community Grants, and Artist/Teacher Partnership Grants-are
all competitive, and each are decided by a panel of local community members.
CAP's Program Director, Robin Schwartz, has been administering CAP's grant
programs for 18 years and has the panel process down to a science: "The
panelists come well prepared and ready to make hard decisions. We have such an
abundance of talented and worthy artists in Tompkins County that choosing who
gets funded each year can be extremely difficult."
For 2011, CAP was able to fund 31 projects with their Grants for Arts Programs, with a total of
$40,100.
The grants make funds available
throughout the County to libraries,
arts organizations, towns, villages, community centers and the like for
professional arts and cultural projects. Funded projects encompass theatre performances, music concerts, children's
programming, dance performances, poetry readings and visual art. Grant awards ranged from $500 to $2,500. The Artists
in Community Grants were able to award two local artists with grants from a $4,000
fund. These grants support the creation of new work of artists
whose interaction with communities is an integral part of their art-making.
Through the Artist/Teacher Partnership grants,
five school and teaching artist partnerships received grants ranging from $900 to
$2,000 from an $8,000 fund. These
partnership grants are designed to assist schools in developing programs where
artists can work directly with teachers to enhance their existing
curriculum. All of the grant recipients will be completing the funded projects
throughout the current year.
The complete list of grant recipients can be found on HERE on ArtsPartner.org.