MOAC Cultural Investment Grant Announcement
BOSTON (1/21/23) - Last week, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) for the City of Boston announced that they are establishing a $10 million multi-year Cultural Investment Grant funded through local ARPA appropriations. The purpose for the grant is to grow and sustain arts and cultural organizations that have a clear vision of a creative, equitable, and more just city. These funds will in turn build capacity for organizations working with communities in Boston who have been most harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly communities of color. The deadline to submit a letter of inquiry for Cultural Investment Grant funding is February 1, 2023 at 11:59pm.
This represents a significant win for arts and cultural organizations in the City of Boston that would not have been possible without the steadfast and coordinated advocacy that our larger creative community demonstrated. Together, we elevated our voices, our needs, and our resources to those with direct decision-making authority and now we are enjoying the rewards of that labor.
When MASSCreative alerted the sector to Boston City Council’s COVID-19 Recovery Committee hearing on ARPA funding for arts and culture in early 2022, Company One Theatre, the Boston Center for the Arts, the Theater Offensive, and King Boston were among sector leaders that testified in support of prioritizing arts and cultural organizations. They pushed the dialogue with Chair Kenzie Bok, committee members, and MOAC to ensure that when the council deliberated how funding would be earmarked for the sector, they would design a plan for the recovery and renewal of a field that generated over $590 million in event-related spending to local restaurants, retails, and hospitality businesses in Greater Boston prior to the pandemic.
Because of your advocacy efforts, city leadership is responding with grants that will range between $600,000 to $3 million to be distributed over four years. These grants will provide investments in the cultural sector that will give organizations a path to thrive in Boston, strengthen our local arts ecosystem, and address the ongoing financial inequities that have harmed organizations founded by and for communities that have been excluded from access to resources.
This is both a cause for celebration and a call to action.
In the coming weeks, MASSCreative will release our policy agenda for the 2023-2024 legislative session that includes bills which will address creative space preservation, leveraging public art as creative placekeeping, and other issues that we have collated directly from the field. At the same time, we are strategizing for the FY24 budget to ensure that the state invests more of our record-setting revenues into the sector in new and impactful ways.
This is an invitation to build on the successes of the Cultural Investment Grant by continuing to engage, organize, and advocate with us on these shared policy priorities. We have a unique opportunity now to position our stories from the field to reinvent the creative sector in Massachusetts.
Call to action and grant information:
MOAC has committed to piloting a Cultural Advisory Team, whose scope will encompass supporting organizations in completing applications and providing MOAC with funding recommendations. The deadline to apply to be on the Cultural Advisory Team is January 22, 2023. We encourage Boston residents to apply for the Cultural Advisory Team.
If you are interested in applying for the Cultural Investment Grant and meet the criteria and eligibility requirements, please submit a letter of inquiry (LOI) by February 1, 2023 at 11:59pm.
More information regarding the Cultural Advisory Team and grant applications and guidelines, as well as their corresponding criteria, can be found here: https://www.boston.gov/departments/arts-and-culture/cultural-investment-grant
For additional questions, you can contact artsgrants@boston.gov or (617) 635-4445.
About MASSCreative
MASSCreative works with artists, cultural councils, arts organizations, and the broader creative community to build a Commonwealth where arts and creativity are an expected, recognized, and valued part of everyday life. Working with their coalition of 400 arts and cultural organizations and artists from across the Commonwealth, MASSCreative uses public education and awareness, grassroots organizing, advocacy campaigns, and other civic and political engagement to ensure that arts, culture, and creativity are considered when important policy and political decisions are made at the state and local levels.
CONTACT:
Kelsey Rode, Director of External Relations
krode@mass-creative.org
