Grant Deadlines

June 1, Sept. 1:

FY12 Grant Deadlines: Career Opportunity, Workshop, Community Arts Development, Master Artist and Apprentice, Walker ArtsTouring Grants, Cultural Collaboration Project Grants. Call ASCA staff before applying.

November 1: 

FY12 Artist in Schools Grants. Call ASCA staff before applying.  

To apply go to http://alaska.cgweb.org/

A Note from Char

THE ARTISTS HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING.  The postcard says it all. It's an announcement of the closing event of the MTS Gallery in Mountain View. The event is May 21, 4 pm in case you haven't heard. The building will soon be razed to make way for new construction.

Maybe it's because the gallery is in ASCA's  neighborhood (our offices are off Mt. View Drive); maybe it's because for years there was a real belief among many citizens that Anchorage could support an arts and culture district in Mt. View.  While I may be a doomsayer, from where I am right now I'd say that's not going to happen, not anytime soon.

There have been bright spots over the last 10 years of trying.  The public art installation at the corner of Mt. View and Commercial streets by Stephanie Kese and Erin Pollock and the Garden Art Park are two beacons.   There have been community improvements over the years due to the generous investment of the Rasmuson Foundation, CIRI,  Anchorage Community Land Trust and the Municipality.  The rebuild of Clark Junior High, the new Mt. View Library (certainly a bright light in any neighborhood), the opening of the artfully designed Credit Union One branch, which provides financial services to the residents of Mountain View, are among the most evident. For awhile, Noble's Diner helped push this transformation along.

What happened to the arts and culture district? My personal opinion is that it failed for lack of community buy in, public/private investment and consistent, visionary leadership.  Actually, those are the ingredients required for any successful major public/private endeavor.  I still have the initial Mountain View in Motion Neighborhood Revitalization through Arts & Culture brochure in my office from 2003 with a timeline that breaks my heart. We were so hopeful and there were many citizens who believed this could happen. The brochure lists 60 major stakeholders in the project.  The neighborhood originally envisioned in 1998 by the City of Anchorage and the Legislature is not the neighborhood where the Arts Council offices are now.

But this still a neighborhood, and ASCA is glad to be a part of it.  It's one of the few original neighborhoods in Anchorage with a rich heritage and fascinating cultural mix. Maybe one day another group of visionaries will come along to work with the residents and complete this transformation. But it will be done without the MTS Gallery, (which was really a project of Trailer Arts Center) and the leadership of Bruce Farnsworth.  He has been the one consistent thread through all these years, who believed that the community would invest in the arts, and that there's a place in Anchorage for a multidisciplinary arts center, for and about artists. Bruce was at the formative culture district meetings in 2002, and he'll be the last one out, turning off the lights at MTS Gallery on May 21. That guy deserves a medal.

And when it's gone, I hope MTS Gallery, a multidisciplinary arts center and the larger vision of the Mt. View Arts and Culture District is not forgotten.  For it's a sad day in any community when a cultural organization dies, particularly when it is still providing services, still has vibrancy.  The artists may have left the building, but we can't let them leave town.

- Char