Medford Arts Council Offering Grants; Seeking Community Input Via Survey
The Medford Arts Council is seeking applications for grant funds to be used for projects taking place in 2016. Applications will be accepted September 1 through October 15.
The Medford Arts Council offers grants to individuals and organizations from throughout the region seeking to engage the Medford public, and we work to support the growth of the creative community in our city. Each year we fund public activities in the areas of arts, humanities, and interpretive science, including concerts, festivals, performances, classes, and school field trips.
For application forms and details about our application process please visit http://www.medfordartscouncil.org/apply-for-grants/. You may also join us for one of our Grant Workshops in the Magoun Room at the Medford Public Library from 6-8 pm on Thursday, September 24 and Monday, October 5.
The Medford Arts Council is pleased to announce its new Community Input Survey, which can be found online through our “Community Input†webpage at http://www.medfordartscouncil.org/community-input/. In addition, the open window for applications for grant funding in 2016 begins September 1st and closes October 15th. All information on how to apply is found on our website.
Our free and anonymous survey will probably take about 10 minutes to complete, and is open to Medford residents and anyone else from the broader community who benefits from our work or has an interest in the vitality of our city’s creative community.
Highlights of this year’s survey include questions on respondents’ preferences for new kinds of programming, your views on important issues for the creative economy in Medford, and your site suggestions for public art in the city’s open spaces.
The survey will be available for several months in 2015, after which we will produce a high-level summary for the public.
Throughout 2015, the Medford Arts Council is conducting a comprehensive community input process, which includes our participation in community events, individual outreach by council members, meetings with stakeholders and community leaders, and targeted solicitation of feedback from our grant recipients. Our online survey for the public is an essential part of this process. We are here to serve Medford, and we can do that most effectively when you tell us what you think. Your feedback and input help us decide how to set our priorities and which proposals are most important to fund.
In addition, interested readers may want to consult our detailed funding and grantmaking analysis, called Funding Matters and available on our website at: http://www.medfordartscouncil.org/funding-matters/. This data-driven report looks back at some trends in our work during the period 1998 to 2015, and helps provide context about community interests and needs as seen through the perspective of the grant program of the Medford Arts Council.
– Submitted by Laurel Siegel