Tag: national endowment for the arts

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Arts Recovery Fund Reaches Goal

Stax Music Academy students creating video for Rhythm & Revolution in 2021. (Credit: Billie Worley)

The pandemic dealt a brutal blow to the local arts scene, forcing arts groups and funding organizations to pull together and find ways to survive.

One of the significant efforts was a partnership among ArtsMemphis, the Memphis Music Initiative, and Music Export Memphis that resulted in the recent completion of a $1.8 million Arts Recovery Fund. The focus of the fund was — and still is — to support individual artists and arts organizations, particularly those that had fewer opportunities for government relief funding due to capacity or revenue.

About $845,000 has been distributed to various groups and individuals. The remaining funds will be given out over the next year or so.

As stated by organizers, the fund aims to “accelerate recovery and support a resilient arts ecosystem by providing an immediate and targeted infusion of investment into the people, processes and programming that will make our arts community stronger and more accessible.”

The money given out so far includes:

  • $250,000 to the Black Arts Fund, a holistic and comprehensive capacity-building effort with Memphis Music Initiative serving 15 Black- and Brown-led local organizations with annual revenue under $500,000.
  • $145,000 of direct artist support that continues the Artist Emergency Fund that helped artists of varying disciplines in 2020 and 2021. The funding was designed to initially support artists immediately impacted by the widespread shut-downs, and is now aiming to support artist recovery.
  • $450,000 for unrestricted operating support sub-grants. These went to 36 of ArtsMemphis’ operating support grantees with smaller budgets.

Over the next year to year-and-a-half, the Arts Recovery Fund will distribute additional monies to individual artists and art organizations for short-term needs and long-term planning. Those include $375,000 for individual artist support, and $640,000 for arts organization support.

Funding has come from a variety of sources, including AutoZone, Belz Foundation, Community Foundation of Greater Memphis’ Midsouth COVID Regional Response Fund, FedEx, First Horizon Foundation, Hyde Foundation, Kresge Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and individual contributors.

Elizabeth Rouse, president and CEO of ArtsMemphis, said, “Memphis was just one of 22 communities across the country to get $500,000 from the American Rescue Plan through the NEA to distribute. That was part of the recovery fund that we’ve already distributed.”

She said, “The good thing is we’re able to be flexible and for this to evolve as the needs change. In the last several months, thankfully, the state of Tennessee, through the American Rescue Plan, invested a significant amount of money in mostly large arts organizations. So through this recovery fund, we’re going to be able to prioritize some of those smaller groups that haven’t had as much access to those government funds.”

Putting all this together required an unprecedented effort at collaboration and partnerships.

“In March of 2020, arts organizations of all sizes and of all artistic disciplines started coming together to meet every other week,” Rouse said, “basically about how they were shutting down and how they were navigating Human Resources issues and Paycheck Protection Program [PPP] loans.”

As terrible as the pandemic became, there were beneficial results from the efforts of groups and individuals to deal with the widespread shut-downs.

“Arts leaders who didn’t know each other at all were all of a sudden going through the same things together,” Rouse said. “So, in a lot of ways, I think the arts community is more connected and working together more closely. The other amazing thing, and to me one of the most exciting things that’s happened, is all the creativity that has come over the last two or three years as artists had to change the way they were creating content. I think we’ll continue to see new partnerships and different artistic disciplines working together. In a lot of ways, the arts are almost more accessible now than they were before because arts organizations are changing how they deliver those opportunities.”

She pointed to some of the collaborations that have recently flourished, such as Ballet Memphis and the Stax Music Academy performing together at Crosstown, and the Carpenter Art Garden teaming up with the Iris Orchestra. “Their art forms complement each other and make for a more enhanced experience, but also it’s a way to reach audiences that a single group couldn’t reach on their own.”

Meanwhile, funders had to also think and act creatively and quickly to make an impact.

The Kresge Foundation, for example, provided support to the Recovery Fund early in the pandemic, with some of it “specific to the capacity-building program that Memphis Music Initiative is running for small organizations,” Rouse said. “These organizations expanded their work and are now creating structures to be able to sustain it and to grow.”

Local funders also provided crucial support “above what they normally do to support the art sector, and we’ve been grateful for that.”

When things settle down and get into the groove of the “new normal,” Rouse hopes arts organizations can take the next several years and use some of this recovery funding to plan for a new future. “That new future is not necessarily going to be anything like the past,” she says. “You know, we’re never going to go back to a time when earned revenue looks the same for these organizations. My hope is that they really use these next couple of years to collaboratively plan for what the new future looks like, what new business models look like.”

She mentions that pre-pandemic, only about half of arts groups had a reserve or endowment. “I hope in the next couple of years, that organizations will have created structures that help them to be in a better situation should something happen.”

Rouse said that “there are tons of offerings as organizations have launched their new seasons and after-school programs get restarted. It’s an exciting August and September time. And it’s good for these organizations that are continuing to have to make changes and evolve and be flexible.”

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ArtsMemphis gets $500,000 grant, announces Arts Week

The $500,000 NEA grant and Arts Week will help boost arts organizations. (Credit: Jon W. Sparks).

ArtsMemphis, which has been instrumental in helping the hard-hit arts community during the pandemic, has made two announcements that serve to boost the arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts has given a $500,000 American Rescue Plan grant to ArtsMemphis that will go to local arts organizations. Those will be awarded in early 2022 to help with recovery and reopening.

Memphis is one of 66 communities across the country, and one of only three Tennessee recipients, to receive funding. ArtsMemphis invested $2.2 million in 64 arts groups and hundreds of artists in 2021. During the pandemic, ArtsMemphis helped arts organizations maintain, rework business plans, create virtual arts events, and develop reopening protocols.

Also, ArtsMemphis has scheduled its second annual Arts Week — a week-long celebration to showcase Memphis’ artists and arts organizations — from December 5th through December 12th, 2021. This year’s Arts Week will have performances and safe in-person experiences from more than a dozen of ArtsMemphis’ grantees. There will also be a series of special events during the week.

ArtsMemphis has also announced a matching gift of up to $30,000 for contributions to ArtsMemphis during the week-long celebration. This year’s event is able to present more than last year’s inaugural week, which was limited to virtual and social media-hosted celebrations due to the pandemic.

“ArtsMemphis is a convener and connector for not only arts resources and advocacy but also for community celebration,” said ArtsMemphis President & CEO Elizabeth Rouse. “As we all have tried to make the most of these last two years, we longed for the light at the end of the tunnel to appear. Now, it seems that the light has begun to grow brighter — in the form of stage lights, marquee lights, and the flashing lights that guide us to our seats to experience the talent of our arts groups.”

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Music Music Blog

Cedric Burnside Named NEA National Heritage Fellow

Cedric Burnside (Credit: Abraham Rowe)

Long ago, North Mississippi Hill Country was overlooked in standard perspectives on the blues. While the Delta Blues had been a buzzword in music circles for generations, the variation to the east and north of the flatlands was little-recognized until artists like R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour, Calvin Jackson, and Sid Hemphill gradually came to be known outside of the region.

Then the documentary Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, released 30 years ago, featured Burnside, Kimbrough, Othar Turner, and Jessie Mae Hemphill. Fat Possum Records began releasing works by these and other artists shortly thereafter. And of course, the North Mississippi Allstars did much to further popularize the sound, albeit in a more hybridized form.

What they all shared in common was an emphasis on droning, hypnotic guitar riffs played over a driving, insistent beat. And the guitar sounds are unapologetically electrified and distorted, in a heavier and more stripped-down manner than the electrified urban blues guitar that came to prominence in the ’50s.

Since then, the sound’s reach has only seemed to grow. And this week, a new milestone was passed when R.L. Burnside’s grandson, Cedric Burnside, who began drumming for R.L. in his teens but grew into a songwriter and guitarist in his own right, was recognized as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk and Traditional Arts program.

This award recognizes individuals who “sustain cultural traditions for future generations,” and Cedric Burnside could not be more illustrative of that quality. While he was long recognized primarily as a drummer, winning Blues Music Awards as an instrumentalist in that field multiple times, he has also grown as a gifted guitarist and composer. He was nominated for Grammy Awards in 2016, for his album Descendants of Hill Country, and in 2019 for his album, Benton County Relic.

Burnside is not the first artist with Memphis and Mid-South roots to be recognized by the NEA. William Bell received the same fellowship last year, as the Memphis Flyer reported at the time.

In a biographical essay on the NEA’s website, onetime Rhodes College associate professor Zandria Robinson, now an associate professor of African American Studies at Georgetown University, writes:

As an architect of the second generation of the Hill Country blues, Burnside has spent his career tending to the legacy of the genre by expanding the next, electric generation of the North Mississippi sound. In Burnside’s care, the sound leads with extended riffs that become sentences, pleas, or exclamations, rendering the guitar like its West African antecedent, the talking drum. These riffs fuse with Burnside’s voice, like the convergence of hill and horizon in the distance, carrying listeners to a deep well of Mississippi history whose waters reflect the present and the future of the state and the nation.

On June 25, Single Lock Records will release Burnside’s latest album, I Be Trying, recorded at Royal Studios. The album’s first single, “Step In,” was released in April.

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News News Blog

COVID Grants Given to Local Arts Organizations

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has chosen ArtsMemphis as one of nine local arts agencies nationwide to receive $250,000 in CARES Act funding. Separately, the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis (CFGM) selected ArtsMemphis to receive a $200,000 capacity building grant from the Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund.

Both grants will help the nonprofit arts community combat the financial implications of COVID-19.

In addition to the CARES Act grant to ArtsMemphis, the NEA announced grants of $50,000 each to four Memphis arts organizations: Blues City Cultural Center, Hattiloo Theatre, Indie Memphis, and Opera Memphis.

The NEA recommended grants for direct funding through the CARES Act to 855 organizations across the country. ArtsMemphis and eight other local arts agencies were selected to receive a larger grant of $250,000, joining Boston, Chicago, Lafayette, Colo., Phoenix, Reno, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Tucson. The remaining 846 organizations will receive grants of $50,000.

The CFGM grant is part of a larger block of funding from the Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund intended to address community needs, and to provide a wider safety net for the forward progress of the arts sector. “We will redirect these funds as unrestricted support to nonprofit arts organizations in Memphis and Shelby County,” says ArtsMemphis president and CEO Elizabeth Rouse.

A survey of more than 250 Shelby County artists and organizations conducted by ArtsMemphis indicated a total anticipated loss of income across the arts sector of $7.4 million through June 30, 2020. Nationally, according to data released by Americans for the Arts (AFTA) of 17,000 arts organizations surveyed, projected losses through June 30th at $8.4 billion.

This is the second distribution of funds received by ArtsMemphis from CFGM’s Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund since the pandemic forced arts organizations to close on March 16th. ArtsMemphis established the Artist Emergency Fund (AEF) in partnership with Music Export Memphis (MEM) and together they distributed $308,000 to 443 individuals in the Mid-South arts sector.

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Music Music Features

The Stax Heritage: William Bell Honored by NEA

CREDIT: David McLister

David McLister

William Bell

The legacy of Stax Records lives on. In the latest national recognition of a Stax-affiliated artist, William Bell, one of the first (and also one of the most recent) hit-makers for the soul label, was named a National Heritage Fellow last week by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk and Traditional Arts program.

As noted on the NEA’s website, “This is the country’s highest honor — a lifetime achievement award — for folk and traditional artists whose life’s work includes both artistic excellence and efforts to sustain cultural traditions for future generations.” Folk and Traditional Arts director Clifford Murphy has described folk art as “something learned knee-to-knee,” by way of noting that all nine recipients of the Heritage Award are exemplary mentors as well as inspired artists.

Memphis native William Bell, based in Atlanta for many years, has certainly excelled at both. As for being an inspired artist, there’s no question that his songs — either for his own records or for others’ — have helped to define soul music. From “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” a hit for Stax in 1961, to duets with Judy Clay like “Private Number,” to the genre-spanning blues hit, “Born Under a Bad Sign,” which Bell co-wrote with Booker T. Jones for Albert King, he’s proven his mettle repeatedly. The Grammy for Best Americana Album he won in 2017 only cinched his status. And yet, as we chatted recently, it was clear that his artistry was only part of the picture.

The 2014 film Take Me to the River was premised on pairing classic soul artists with contemporary rappers, as they recorded new interpretations of old-school gems at Royal Studios. Bell, for example, recut “I Forgot to Be Your Lover” with Snoop Dogg. Since then, director Martin Shore has leveraged its publicity to underwrite an educational initiative that’s becoming widely adopted. And of course, Bell participates regularly in workshops with students at the Stax Music Academy. Clearly, William Bell is thinking ahead.

Memphis Flyer: Did you have any inkling you’d be named a National Heritage Fellow?
William Bell: I wasn’t expecting it. My management, a couple weeks before the announcement, informed me that I was nominated to be selected. But I didn’t think I would win it. It was a total surprise to me. And I was just overjoyed, being in great company. It’s a high honor. I feel very blessed and humbled.

You’ve done a lot of work with the Take Me to the River Educational Initiative and the Stax Music Academy. Did that factor into your selection?
I assume that was a lot of it. We work with a lot of different groups. We work with the Berklee College of Music also, and the New York School of Music. I think a lot of that would have been part of the reason I was selected.
[pullquote-1] You’ve really thrown yourself into this kind of public service work.
I feel very fortunate to have come up and had the success that I’ve had, as far as a career, for so long. And my health is still good. So I think it’s time to give back and help the youngsters along, and teach them the importance of music itself.

So that’s what I strive to do. Give them as much wisdom and foresight as I can, into a career in music, or just being creative in whatever the arts are. Because that’s a gift for all of us.

Do you have specific plans on how to use the $25,000 grant that comes with the fellowship?
Oh yeah! It’ll be put to good use. I work with a lot of kids here in Atlanta. I have a production company and a studio, so I work with kids here. And I’m working still with the Stax Music Academy and Soulsville over there, and with the Take Me to the River Educational Initiative. So I will be putting it to good use. We’re recording and teaching kids here in Atlanta. Trying to get them started on the right path.

You recently did a webinar on Take Me to the River with Martin Shore, Boo Mitchell and former Stax president Al Bell, subtitled “A Movement of Social Consciousness.” What were some of the ideas you explored?
I’ve done about three or four of these with Martin. Just keeping busy, trying to pass the torch along. The times are amazing. I’ve lived through the upheavals and the things we’re going through now, for many years. It’s just amazing that we’re still going through the same identical things that we went through in the ’60s. When you realize that people have given their lives, protesting and dying for so many years. … We try to make people aware of how to get along, how to live together on this planet as one human species, in songs, because that’s what we’ve gotta learn to do. And we’ve got to be open and honest with our dialogue. And find some common denominator and solution to this problem of bigotry and hatred and inequality in our society.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Grand News – New Ballet Ensemble Receives $30,000 Via National Endowment for the Arts

New Ballet Ensemble

Great news for Memphis’ forward-thinking, fusion-oriented classical dance troupe. New Ballet Ensemble & School (NBES) has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

The money awarded to NBES will enable the continuation of dance residency programs in the Orange Mound community.

“Organizations such as New Ballet Ensemble & School are giving people in their community the opportunity to learn, create, and be inspired,” Mary Anne Carter, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, wrote in a prepared statement.

Via press materials:

“The NEA grant award will support NBES’ residency programs in Orange Mound schools, including Dunbar Elementary. NBES has been working with Dunbar Elementary since 2007, and NEA support has helped grow the partnership over the years with tuition-free, after-school classes in ballet, hip-hop, Flamenco, and West African dance. NEA funding will also support students who are moving from Dunbar into the NBES studio program on scholarship for advanced training.
In 2019, NBES will graduate three seniors who began their training at Dunbar in 2007 and advanced through the studio program. These three students collectively earned $4,138,188 in scholarships from the various colleges they applied to, and all received full scholarships to their colleges of choice, including Vanderbilt University, Christian Brothers University, and Xavier University of Louisiana. ”

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Book Features Books

Reading: At Risk

According to a report entitled Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, issued by the National Endowment for the Arts, reading in America — literary reading, in the form of novels, short stories, poetry, and plays — is declining dramatically. That goes for every age group, and in the past 20 years, it’s meant a loss of 20 million potential readers. What’s more, the overall rate of decline is increasing, tripling since 1992. The steepest drop: readers 18 to 24 years of age.

“This report documents a national crisis,” Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA, said when the survey was released three years ago.

“America can no longer take active and engaged literacy for granted,” Gioia went on to say. “As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent minded. These are not qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose. No single factor caused this problem. No single solution can solve it. But it cannot be ignored and must be addressed.”

The NEA, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with the organization Arts Midwest, is doing its part to address the problem. The NEA is calling it “The Big Read,” and in this the program’s inaugural year, Rhodes College is doing its part too. Rhodes is among the more than 100 recipients nationwide of a grant from the NEA to conduct a Big Read locally. The idea is to get everybody — students and adults, school groups and book clubs — to read one book and talk about it.

From the list of 12 titles recommended by a “Readers Circle” of writers, scholars, librarians, critics, and publishing professionals assembled by the NEA, a committee at Rhodes has selected Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. That book, according to Cathy Palmer, of Rhodes’ Office of College Relations and coordinator of the Big Read, will not only enhance student learning and provide for discussion. It will fit nicely into the college’s developing digital archive of the civil rights movement in Memphis, “Crossroads to Freedom.”

The big kick-off for Memphis’ Big Read is Tuesday, October 2nd, on the Rhodes College campus. Shelby County mayor A C Wharton will be there. Free copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, plus free bookmarks, reading guides, teacher guides, and audio CDs (all provided by the NEA) will be available. Participants can also sign up for community book groups. But that’s not all. On October 9th, panelists will discuss race relations in the context of To Kill a Mockingbird at Cypress Middle School. A “Family Night,” with a focus on kids’ activities and parenting tips, will take place on October 25th at the Hollywood Community Center. And on November 8th, Theatre Memphis will stage an event inspired by Harper Lee’s enduring look at childhood and racial tensions in the segregated South.

But first, the Big Read needs readers.

According to Palmer, “We need people to participate. We’re tying to reach out to the whole community — yes, absolutely everybody! Schools. Book clubs. Bookstores. Other colleges. We want people to start reading again, get their own book groups started, get conversations going. We’ll keep track of the numbers that show up at these events and the materials given away, and then we’ll report back to the NEA. We’ll hand out evaluation cards with questions such as how often you read, what kind of reading you do, in addition to general demographic questions.”

Is Rhodes hoping to make the Big Read an annual event?

“Every year, we hope,” Palmer says. “It’s our goal. And so far, so good.”

“The Big Read Kick-off” will be at the Crain Reception Hall of the Bryan Campus Life Center at Rhodes College on Tuesday, October 2nd, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. For more information on that event and other Big Read programs in Memphis over the next several weeks, contact Cathy Palmer at 843-3958 or at palmerc@rhodes.edu. For background information on the Big Read, go to the National Endowment for the Arts’ Web site at www.neabigread.org.