Organizational Stability Grant
Organizational Stability Grant
Organizational Support to Help Defray the Impact of the Pandemic - When possible, NSMA hopes to restart operations and un-furlough our single employee.
Tara Makinen: Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Tammy Mattonen: visual artists, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Kathy Neff: musician, Director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota-Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Emily Swanson: arts administrator at Oldenburg Arts and Cultural Community.
Roxann Berglund: musician; Leah Yellowbird: multi-medium visual artist; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Classie Dudley: ARAC Arts Leadership Fellow; Joan Farnam: ceramicist, founder of North Shore Arts Scene.
ACHF Arts Education
Our goal is to survive the social and financial impacts of the pandemic, which have shut down our programming operations for the past several weeks, due to the stay-at-home and social distancing requirements ordered by state and local government. When it's possible, we plan to recalibrate and rebuild our program offerings -- public concerts, dances, and musical education outreach -- but we will need financial support to do so. As the principal provider of high-quality, diverse musical arts performance and education in our 120-mile radius, our community relies on us for programming they cannot access elsewhere. As a reliable provider of work to musical artists for 35 years, our goal is to get back up and running so we can once again hire and pay artists and contribute to their livelihoods. We will know we have succeeded once we are contracting and paying artists again and offering programming to our community on a sustainable basis. We will know that we have succeeded once we have been able to rebuild our program season (whatever is left of it!) and start planning ahead for the following season; once we are able to start contracting and paying artists again; and once we can again present programming to our community on an ongoing and sustainable basis. We realize that this may not be a completely smooth process, for us and all organizations who host large gatherings, since public guidelines and restrictions may need to tighten and loosen according to how the virus moves and manifests in state and local populations. Therefore, we will also know we have succeeded once we have a system in place that allows us to work within this new scenario and not simply have to remain shut down with a very unclear vision of the future.
Our overarching goal was for our organization to survive the social and financial impacts of the pandemic, which shut down our regular programming operations starting in March 2020. More specifically our goal was, given that our sole employee had to be furloughed for the first couple months of the summer, that once she was unfurloughed she would be able to do the work needed to sustain limited operations, so when the time came to rebuild and start up regular operations again we would be in a good position to do that. Funds from this grant, which covered her work hours needed for those limited operations from August to December 2020, enabled that goal to be met.