Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | Neighborhoods | Elicker Administration | Arts & Anti-racism
Joe Rodriguez, president of Puerto Ricans United. The organization, which is run by an all-volunteer board, received funding for its annual day-long festival on the New Haven Green. "When you invest in the arts, when you invest in arts organizations, when you invest in the community, when you invest in people, we all thrive," he said Friday. Lucy Gellman Photos.
An expanded arts education program that recognizes the power of spoken word. A parade that returns each year to Westville with the first bursts of fall foliage, bringing dozens of dancing puppets into Edgewood Park. A creative arts program that operates out of a corner store in Dwight, arts collective for Afghan moms, and pottery studio that is still just getting off the ground.
Those are just some of the arts organizations, grassroots collectives, and individual artists to receive a total of $677,121 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding from the city’s Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism this year. Friday, city officials and grantees outlined some of those projects from the roof of 70 Audubon St., a building that now houses the New Haven Ballet, Long Wharf Theatre, Arts Council of Greater New Haven, and classes from the Educational Center for the Arts.
Grantees range from the long-running New Haven Ballet, Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, CT Folk Fest and others to new creative undertakings in every corner of the city. View a full list of grantees, with funding amounts, on the city’s website here.
"We wanted to make sure that we are centering people in this community who are doing the work of cultural equity,” said Cultural Affairs Director Adriane Jefferson. “We have to remember that we are bouncing back, still, from the pandemic. Our hope is that some of this funding has allowed businesses to thrive a little bit more, the organizations to be supported a little bit more, and to really help mitigate the economic impact and the damage that was done during the pandemic."
Adriane Jefferson, who is the director of cultural affairs for the City of New Haven.
“It’s really about the history, the culture, the arts that make New Haven such a desirable place to be, and you all are the roots of that,” added Courtney Walker Hendricson, deputy director of economic development for the city. “We are working hard to ensure that all of our American Rescue Plan supports meaningful projects, events and organizations in New Haven.”
In all, $199,020 has gone to a total of 35 individual artists, many of whom are representing small businesses and collectives, and the remaining $478,101 to over 20 arts organizations based in the city of New Haven. Funding for artists will be administered by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven; funding for organizations will come directly from the city. For the sake of full transparency, the Arts Paper is a program of the Arts Council, but is editorially independent from it.
The money comes out of a total $1.2 million in ARPA dollars that the department received last year, and does not include the $350,647 that the city allocated to Arts & Culture this year in its $662.7 million general fund budget. Grant funding is divided into six programs: summer partnerships, communal holiday celebrations, arts gathering and networking events, expanded arts education, creative arts advancement, and citywide arts and culture.
Thabisa Rich. Behind her are Courtney Walker Hendricson, artist Raheem Nelson, Elm Shakespeare's Rebecca Goodheart, Mayor Justin Elicker, Jamal Robinson, and Joe Rodriguez.
Both Jefferson and Community Outreach Coordinator Thabisa Rich noted that it dovetails directly with the department’s vision for cultural equity, which has been at the forefront of Jefferson’s work since her arrival in February 2020. Both also pointed to the grants as part of the city’s Cultural Equity Plan, which is just over a year and a half old.
“Everybody said: ‘Hey, we want to be represented. We want change to be visible. We don't just want a pat on the back, but we want to see you go down in your pockets and affect change with your dollars,’” Rich said. “And this is exactly what we're doing right now.”
Recipients reflect that commitment in spades, Rich added—including a number of returning grantees who have used city and federal funds to boost creative endeavors, and new grantees who have never qualified for or received funding from the city before. Artists’ projects, which netted between $2,000 and $10,000 each, range from new podcast initiatives (listen here, for instance, to hear host Jamarr Jabari talk to musician Ashley Hamel) and ceramic studio practices to music festivals by and for artists of color.
Some artists, like Alisha Crutchfield of BLOOM and Angel Dahfay of Sweets & Sounds Con, have already established themselves as cultural connectors in the city. Others, like author Colleen Marie Olinski and art therapist Rita Charles, will be kicking off new initiatives from a grassroots publishing project to an art therapy studio on wheels. Many grantees, such as Marianna Apostolakis of East Rock House and Shayla Streater of the Elements of Abundance, are working directly with grassroots collectives to build intentional and safe affinity spaces in the city.
" You all know my motto," said Alisha Crutchfield. "Let's Grow!"
Many are also lifelong or longtime New Haveners who have historically been boxed out of funding. Kenia and Michael Massey, who run the Black Corner Store on Edgewood Avenue, will be able to reach beyond their own pockets for a creative teen program that they’ve dreamed about launching for years. Artist Manny James Sorrels, who grew up in the Hill and leads the nonprofit Creative Hearts, Inc., is taking the grant to learn more about music himself, so he can pass it on to the young people he works with every day out of his Shelton Avenue studio.
“I am thankful and excited to receive the funding because it gives me the opportunity to further my musical education, which will enhance my artistry and help me provide a higher level of service to the young people of Creative Hearts!” he said via text message after Friday’s press conference.
“We are about connection, collaboration, and really restoring the love,” said Hafeeza Turé, “Wind” of the Elements of Abundance. Already, the group has established a relationship with Accra, Ghana, and with New Haven Sister Cities to promote cultural awareness in and beyond New Haven—work that they’ve been doing for free up to this point. “Everywhere we go, we want to plant those sorts of seeds.”
Hafeeza "Wind" Turé: “We are about connection, collaboration, and really restoring the love." She is pictured at the center with Shayla "Earth" Streater and Arden "Fire" Santana.
Meanwhile, the remaining chunk of funding has gone largely to arts organizations that are helping build cross-cultural understanding and grow equity through their programming. In addition to free citywide arts events like the annual Puerto Rican Festival, Black Wall Street New Haven, Westville-based Seeing Sounds Festival, annual Juneteenth celebration on the New Haven Green and growing growing Apizza Fest, there are several community-centered and educational projects that can continue in part because of the city’s support.
Arts for Learning Connecticut, for instance, will be able to extend its “Emerge” initiative for teaching artists into a second year. Music Haven will be able to support its after-school programming in Fair Haven, and keep its student concerts free to the community. Elm Shakespeare Company, which has been growing its footprint in the New Haven Public Schools and with the youth anti-violence group Ice The Beef, will be also able to keep all of its performances free and open to the public.
“The heartbeat is something that we hold really near and dear in Shakespeare,” said Rebecca Goodheart, artistic director of Elm Shakespeare. “It’s the life force that goes through everything we do. And really, just the way that rhythm is a life force, we want to be a life force in this community.”
“The reality is that for arts organizations, financial support is a life force,” she continued. “That’s something we need to stay healthy and to function and to do what we do. That makes the Office of Arts, Culture and Tourism the heart of this city.”
Robinson: "If we are going to diversify that space, this allows us to do it in a way that really builds community and builds culture."
There’s also the chance for New Haveners to feel the echoes of that funding: several ARPA-supported events are coming up as New Haven heads into fall, and each brings with it the opportunity to grow community. In addition to concerts and performances that will unfold across the next months, Wine Down CT Founders Thema Haida and Loren Jefferson will hold their next event, meant to bring together creatives of color, on September 23 at Bear’s Smokehouse.
Jamal Robinson, director of sales and marketing at New England Brewing Company and the co-founder and president of the Change In the Air Festival and eponymous foundation, pointed to how ARPA dollars distributed by the city can help undo centuries of economic harm and exclusion that have fallen disproportionately on Black people and non-Black people of color.
Currently, he said, craft brewing is an $85 billion industry—and yet Black brewers represent less than one percent (brewers of color represent under five percent). The Change In The Air Foundation seeks to change that through its annual craft beer festival, a growing scholarship fund at Sacred Heart University, and awareness among Black consumers who have never felt that craft beer is for them. The foundation will be using $20,000 from the city to throw its third annual festival at Bear’s Smokehouse in October.
“The new spaces aspect of that is vital,” he said. “If we are going to diversify that space, this allows us to do it in a way that really builds community and builds culture. This grand funding allows us to take the idea … and turn it into a reality that involves community and culture in a meaningful, impactful way that everyone benefits from.”
Watch the full press conference here.