Connecticut Office of the Arts | Arts & Culture | COVID-19
| New Haven Symphony Orchestra Photos. |
A long-awaited wave of federal relief is coming to arts organizations in Connecticut. The recipients will not be based on financial need, economic viability, mission, or community impact: they'll be randomly selected from a pool that may include hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants.
The Connecticut Office of the Arts made that announcement Wednesday afternoon, in an email introducing a new CARES Act Emergency Relief Grant for Connecticut Arts Organizations. The grant program is part of the $447,000 coming to the state from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which received $75 million in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Of that $75 million chunk, 40 percent was earmarked for state arts agencies.
More information is available here. Applications are due by June 3.
"You can quickly do the math," said Elizabeth Shapiro, director of arts, preservation and museums at the Office of the Arts, in a call with arts organizations last month. "$447,000 and all of our arts organizations. We're looking at kind of a drop in the bucket situation. One of my staff said, 'well, better than a sharp stick in the eye.' Which I would say is true."
Shapiro explained that the funds cannot go to direct relief for artists (the state closed applications for two emergency relief grants for artists last week), per the NEA's guidelines. Instead, they are reserved for Connecticut nonprofits that have been directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The program offers a base amount of $1,500, with an additional $500 available for organizations that have at least one full- or part-time paid staff position, and an additional $1,000 for organizations that have two or more full- or part-time paid staff positions.
Organizations must have annual operating budgets between $5,000 and $500,000 to apply. Because the Office of the Arts expects hundreds of applications, grants will not be distributed based on financial need, mission, or the community a given organization serves.
"Due to limited funds and anticipated high volume of applications, grantees will be randomly selected from the pool of eligible applicants with attention to geographic distribution," the Office of the Arts wrote in an initial announcement of the program.
Connecticut Humanities has also announced a forthcoming CARES Act grant program, which will be open to "museums, cultural centers, historical societies, libraries, and other humanities organizations." The agency has not yet posted an application to its webpage; the funding comes from the $75 million allocated to the National Endowment for the Humanities in the passage of CARES Act funding in March.
As of this month, Connecticut's arts and culture sector has reported a financial loss of $14,576,138, according to survey results from Americans for the Arts. Of that pool—based of 385 responses from individuals and organizations—96 percent of respondents reported one or multiple cancellations, with an estimated 1,562,289 lost attendees.
There have been, according to the survey, over 600 layoffs and over 700 furloughs in that time. Only 55 percent of those who took the survey in Connecticut reported that they were confident their organization would survive the impact of COVID-19. That number is in line with national responses: of 13,738 people who had filled out the survey, just 58 percent thought their organization would survive.
The grant funding also comes as the state inches toward a four-phase reopening on May 20. Last week, the Office of the Arts released a set of guidelines for arts organizations operating during COVID-19. In an interview last Wednesday, Shapiro acknowledged that some arts institutions may be the last to come back, because so much of what they do is focused on social gathering.
"In truth, what it is is a series of questions and topics to explore between an organization, its staff, and governing body," she said of the guide. "I don’t see reopening as a run or a sprint, I see it as a crawl. I want us to crawl toward reopening."
"I’m ultimately optimistic," she added. "I think when people look back at this, they’ll think, thank goodness for the songs and the stories and the content that helped us preserve our mental health."
More information, including links to the application and eligibility requirements, is available here. Applications are due by June 3.