Extremely competitive national grant program will consider 70 projects
(June 6, 2017) Today, ArtPlace America announced that Appalachian Artisan Center’s Culture of Recovery Project is one of 70 finalists for the 2017 National Creative Placemaking Fund (NCPF). ArtPlace selected these 70 proposals from 987 applications, making AAC’s project one of just 7% of the projects across the country to make this cut.
ArtPlace’s National Creative Placemaking Fund is a highly competitive national program, receiving 987 applications this year. Investing money in communities across the country in which artists, arts organizations, and arts and culture activity help drive community development change across 10 sectors of community planning and development: agriculture and food; economic development; education and youth; environment and energy; health; housing; immigration; public safety; transportation; or workforce development.
The Appalachian Artisan Center’s proposed Culture of Recovery Project seeks to utilize the arts in the battle against substance abuse in Appalachia.
The drug addiction epidemic, now of concern nationally, began in eastern Kentucky well over a decade ago with unprecedented abuse of prescription pain killers. Out-migration is gutting the local economy, and residents who are in recovery face barriers to employment. This project will marry two cultures of recovery: that of those combatting addiction, and that of those working to reclaim the traditional arts and crafts of the area. This project will begin by incorporating art- and craft-based therapies as part of recovery programs and
link them with apprenticeships and ongoing workforce and small business development opportunities.
“These seventy finalists are extraordinary examples of the ways that artists, arts organizations, and communities are thinking about working together,” said ArtPlace Director of National Grantmaking F. Javier Torres. “We look forward to learning more about all of them, as we visit with them this summer.”
“Each of these projects has proposed something extraordinary and important,” added ArtPlace Executive Director Jamie Bennett. “We would love to be able to invest in all of them, and know that choices ahead of us will be extraordinarily difficult.”
The complete list of the 2017 finalists for ArtPlace’s National Creative Placemaking Fund may be found here.
The Appalachian Artisan Center aims to develop the economy of eastern Kentucky through arts, culture, and heritage.
AAC is dedicated to supporting artists by helping them create and grow successful businesses. The Center provides assistance to artists in many ways including business plan development, training and continuing education opportunities, studio space, and a venue to sell and exhibit their work.
About ArtPlace America
ArtPlace America (ArtPlace) is a ten-year collaboration among 16 partner foundations, along with 8 federal agencies and 6 financial institutions, that works to position arts and culture as a core sector of comprehensive community planning and development in order to help strengthen the social, physical, and economic fabric of communities.
ArtPlace focuses its work on creative placemaking, projects in which art plays an intentional and integrated role in place-based community planning and development. This brings artists, arts organizations, and artistic activity into the suite of placemaking strategies pioneered by Jane Jacobs and her colleagues, who believed that community development must be locally informed, human-centric, and holistic.