ARTS CONNECTION

Artists are integral to healthy communities, and the arts are a societal cornerstone that bring people together, build community, and foster social progress. The Artists Activating Communities program supports artistic residencies by centralizing artists and their artistic processes as vehicles for community vitality. Funded projects are artist-driven, and engage community members as active participants.

Arts Connection received a California Arts Council grant for 16,200, along with matching funds from the San Bernardino Fine Arts Commission of $10,000 dollars, to support the creation of a living artwork by the artist collective, Fallen Fruit. The project will take place at The Garcia Center for the Arts in the City of San Bernardino, with satellite locations in the surrounding neighborhood. It will include a variety of citrus trees, hand-crafted wooden picnic tables etched with community quotes, and be accompanied by a suite of public participatory projects, culminating in a zine and an exhibition. Printmaker Bob Hurton (aka Uncle Bacon), and Inlandia’s Poet Laureate, Nikia Chaney, will work with Fallen Fruit and community participants on the creation of the Zine.

“We had such a positive response to Fallen Fruit’s keynote at our annual conference last October, we had to bring them back to do a project. Their work really brings the community together!” said Danielle Giudici Wallis, the Executive Director of Arts Connection, the arts council for San Bernardino County.

The California Arts Council’s Artists Activating Communities grant program is now in its second year. Arts Connection is one of just 62 grantees chosen for this highly competitive program, which received applications from 99 organizations statewide. The news of Arts Connection’s grant was featured as part of a larger announcement from the California Arts Council, which can be viewed online at http://arts.ca.gov/news/pressreleases.php.

Since 2005, more than 12,000 schools, 50,000 teachers, and 3.3 million students have discovered the power of Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest. This program provides free, easy-to-use materials that encourage high school students to learn about classic and contemporary poetry through memorization, performance, and competition.

The competition starts in the classroom with students choosing poems to memorize and recite from an online anthology of more than 900 poems. Students advance to school-wide contests, then regional and state finals.

Arts Connection gets information out to schools, and contracts with teaching poets to work with contestants in the schools. We also organize the annual countywide contest, and send the champion to Sacramento to compete at the state level.

By participating in the program, students have the chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the national finals in Washington, DC, in April 2018. In total, Poetry Out Loud will award more than $100,000 to state- and national-level winners and their schools.

Summary
Public funding for individual artists and their incredibly innovative ideas is sorely lacking in San
Bernardino County. In response, Arts Connection has created this annual micro grant funding
opportunity to advance the artistic careers of our county’s creative community.
The Arts Innovator Micro Grant program offers individual artists one-time grants of $500 for projects on
a one-time basis. Artists must live and work in San Bernardino County.
Program Funding Goals
Artists of all mediums and artistic experiences are welcome and encouraged to apply. This program
intends to support artists working, residing in, and benefiting the communities of San Bernardino
County. Artists must be current, full-time residents of San Bernardino County.
Proposed projects should demonstrate innovative thinking and creative, arts-based approaches to
advance an individual, local, or community identified goal. This must be clearly stated in your project
idea narrative in the application.

In 2019, Arts Connection received an NEA Big Read Grant From The National Endowment For The Arts To Host The Morongo Basin’s First Big Read, A Month-Long Celebration And Community Read.
The program which included over 20 events from art exhibitions, to panel and book discussions, workshops and performances, aimed to build community and inspire conversation and discovery through the joy of sharing a good book. The 2019 NEA Big Read book selection Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, brought readers together around the themes of survival, legacy and community.

In 2020, the community read Lab Girl; 2021 we are reading An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo.