Chandler organizations get boost to expand arts
By Colleen Sparks, Managing Editor, SanTan Sun News
Several Chandler organizations are getting a boost to help sustain and expand their arts programs.
The Arizona Commission on the Arts recently awarded 38 grants to Arizona schools and nonprofit organizations in support of programs that establish or augment opportunities for state residents of all ages to learn via or about the arts.
A total of $93,000 was awarded in this round of grant-making. In July, the Arts Commission, a state agency that also administers money from the National Endowment for the Arts, approved $2.65 million in grants to nonprofit arts organizations, festivals, schools and community-based programs throughout Arizona.
This round of grants is made up of two funding programs: Arts Learning Collaboration Grants and Lifelong Arts Engagement Grants.
The collaboration grants strengthen the work of school-based arts teaching and learning programs via projects occurring in school, after school or during summer, intersession and in-services.
The lifelong engagement grants help partnerships that nurture meaningful arts learning experiences in various community settings for people of any age.
Community/social service organizations or governmental entities teamed up with arts organizations or professional teaching artists to apply for these grants.
Chandler Children’s Choir Inc. received a grant of $8,000 from the commission.
“We’ve received grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts almost from when we started though this is by far the largest grant we’ve received from them,” Adam Stewart, chairman of the board for the Chandler Children’s Choir said. “We’re super-excited.”
The grant will help the Chandler Children’s Choir with a new program it recently started teaching choral music to students at Hartford Sylvia Encinas Elementary School, a Title 1 school, Stewart said. The program will be for students in grades 2-6.
“There’s definitely a lot of cost involved,” he said. “We committed to doing it. We just thought it was time for us to reach out more but this will go a long way to helping us out.”
The grant will also help the Chandler Children’s Choir offset the cost of sheet music for its choir members which costs about $3,000 to $4,000 a year, Stewart said.
Stewart’s wife, Aimee Stewart, is artistic director of the Chandler Children’s Choir and two of their children: Ivy, 12, and Oliver, 8, are in the choir. Their older children have “graduated” from the choir.
An instrumental group in Chandler is also thrilled to have received a grant from the state commission. Chandler Symphony Orchestra received a grant of $3,500.
“It is something that we cross our fingers for every year,” Pam Hahn, executive director of the Chandler Symphony Orchestra and harp player said. “We don’t take it for granted.”
Hahn said the orchestra will use the grant money for operating expenses including printing programs and web hosting.
The Chandler Cultural Foundation received a grant of $22,000 from the commission. The foundation raises money to support artistic and educational programs and for an endowment fund that creates long-term sustainability for the Chandler Center for the Arts.
Another organization with a Chandler base, the Fine Arts Association of Arizona, got a grant of $3,500.
Kyrene de la Paloma Elementary School in Chandler received a $2,000 grant from the commission.
In following the Arts Commission’s strategic plan and governing statutes, nonprofit organizations and schools are given grants based on factors including the quality of programming, possible impact and responsible stewardship of public funds.
Grant applications are reviewed within stringent panel processes and approved by the agency’s board of governor-appointed commissioners.
The Arizona Commission on the Arts is a guiding force in the professional and creative development of the state’s arts sector.
Information: azarts.gov.