Carroll County art projects receive grants through TAF

Visual arts, performing arts, and festivals throughout north-west central Indiana recently received generous support through the Indiana Arts Commission Regional Arts Partnership.

Twenty-seven area organizations, including three from Carroll County, received grant awards totaling $111,825 for arts programming. The grants are from the Indiana Arts Commission (IAC) through the Tippecanoe Arts Federation (TAF), which serves 14 counties in northwest central Indiana. Since 1997, TAF has partnered with the IAC as part of its Regional Arts Partnership. Funding was also provided by Eli Lilly and Company Foundation and private donations.

Volunteer panelists evaluated the requests based on the following criteria: quality of programming, community impact/public benefit, and quality of management. Arts Projects and Arts Operating Support grants also earned bonus points based on reaching underserved populations, and collaborations between arts providers, arts organizations and other community sectors.

Flora Psi Iota Xi

The grant to Beta Alpha Chapter of Psi Iota Xi is for $4,294. It is for Carroll Elementary's Artist in Residence (AIR) program and also for a three-county cooperative effort to bring Book Readers and Horn Blowers to six Carroll, Cass, and Clinton county schools. This is the fourth year for the cooperative part of the grant. Flora Psi Iota Xi uses part of this grant and then has matching funds from the other communities to pay for the program. The sorority also matches for the program that comes to Carroll.

About half of the grant funds go to Book Readers in three counties, and the other half is applied to AIR.

The AIR program also receives local support.

The AIR program at Carroll includes visiting artists and an after-school art enrichment program taught by Grace Woodruff. After school art enrichment is cosponsored by the Gifted & Talented program at CES.

Flora Public Library

The Flora-Monroe Township Public Library will use its grant of $1,000 to fund "It's All About the Circus," an art education program that will be incorporated into the library's 2007 summer reading program. It is an introduction to artists

who worked with circus themes, including Rouault, Calder, Picasso, Seurat, Toulouse Lautrec, and Degas. Participants will also explore books with circus themes and illustrations, by author/illustrators such as Bill Peet and Ezra Jack Keats.

The art projects will relate to art styles, materials, and techniques used through history. Classes will be available for all ages, except pre-kindergarten. Participants will have an opportunity to create calliope wagons and parade scenes, mobiles, dioramas, 3-D clowns, and more. Other summer reading events will be based on the circus theme and coordinated with the art activities. Grace Woodruff will be the instructor.

Carroll School Corporation

The $1,000 grant to Carroll Consolidated School Corporation will help finance the production of "The Pied Piper" by the Missoula Children's Theater.

The Missoula Children's Theater sends two actors, costumes, and scenery to the school on Oct. 2 to start auditions and rehearsals for the musical that will take place on Oct. 7. Performances will be at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Students from kindergarten through 12th grade are welcome to audition after school in the elementary gym on Oct. 2.

The play is funded by the corporation's Advanced Learning Program, the Tippecanoe Arts Federation, and ticket sales. The grant was written by Susan Briggs.

Grant monies for the 27 area organizations are made available from the Indiana Arts Commission, funded by the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Non-profit organizations and schools in Benton, Carroll, Cass, Clinton, Fountain, Howard, Jasper, Montgomery, Newton, Pulaski, Tippecanoe, Tipton, Warren and White counties may apply for funding in the spring of each year. Applicants may request funding for dance, music, theatre, visual arts, design arts, crafts, photography, media arts, literature, folk/traditional arts, interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary projects.