Arts access grant helps youth,children to participate in visual arts programming in Swift Current
The Art Gallery of Swift Current (AGSC) has initiated a new arts access grant to financially assist youth and children to participate in visual arts programming.
The grant will help to make a variety of classes and workshops offered by the AGSC more accessible to those under 18. “It will remove some of the cost barriers that our classes unfortunately have to have,” AGSC Director Heather Benning said recently.
The AGSC offers arts education programming to the public for a cost recovery fee, which will vary depending on the type of class and materials needed.
“We determine the pricing of classes based on the cost of our educators and the cost of the materials,” she explained. “So we try to make the classes to be cost neutral at six to seven students, because that way we can run the class.
"If we don't make it cost neutral, then the classes could go into arrears and then we eventually lose the opportunity to offer classes if we can't maintain our budgets.”
This means that some families might not be able to afford the fee for a class or workshop offered by the AGSC.
“We've been contacted in the past by Social Services to ask if we have any funding opportunities for underprivileged children,” she said. “At the time that they had asked this, we didn't have anything set up, but I was able to reserve some spaces in a class.”
She added that Creative Kids provides funding for Saskatchewan children to participate in arts and cultural activities, but those application deadlines will not always be suitable for families looking for funding to help their children attend AGSC programming.
“Often those deadlines don't work with our ongoing classes,” she said. “It will work for our summer camps, but it won't work for our other classes that happen throughout the year. They put out a report every year and you can see how many grants were given out per region and we've noticed that very few kids from the southwest region were receiving any of these funds.”
She therefore had a couple of conversations with Melissa Shaw, the aquatic superintendent at the City of Swift Current, about the recreation access grant offered by the City.
“We felt there's a need for arts to be accessible to all students and to all youth,” Benning said. “So we thought that by creating this arts access grant, which is run very similar to the recreation access grant, that we can basically get the funds out to the people who need the funds.”
The AGSC was successful in receiving a Saskatchewan Lotteries Community Support Grant to the value of $2,400 from the City of Swift Current to initiate the arts access grant for 2022/23, starting from April 1 to March 31.
“This is our pilot year and we didn't know how much demand there is going to be,” she said. “So we started with $2,400. It is about 14 to 16 classes, depending on which classes are selected. If we find that there is a significant demand for more, we'll obviously apply for more funding, but for now this was a safe number that we were hopeful that we could secure funding for and we're very happy that we were provided with this funding.”
The grant is available for all visual arts programming offered by the AGSC for youth and children, varying from weekend workshops to classes taking place over several weeks as well as the summer art studio and summer art camp. All art classes take place at the Dickson Community Centre (751 Lorne Street West). In the past the outdoor summer art camp and the painting classes with Becca Klein were popular among youth and children.
“We have a 3D class that she'll be teaching as well this year,” Benning said. “Most of our classes are actually quite popular. We've been able to run a significantly larger number of classes than have been done in the past.”
A requirement of the application process is that an application form must be submitted on behalf of a family or individual by an agency in the community that provides assistance to families.
Agencies that can submit an application for an arts access grant include the Southwest Newcomer Welcome Centre, Family Resource Centre, Salvation Army, Social Services, churches and schools.
The application form includes three options for the percentage of the class fee to be covered by the grant. It can be 50, 75 or 90 per cent of the total class fee, and the applicant must indicate what percentage of funding support is needed.
For more information about the arts access grant, visit the AGSC (411 Herbert Street East) or call 306-778-2736. More information and the application form are also available on the AGSC website. Details about the grant can be found in the Learn section of the website (artgalleryofswiftcurrent.org).