Isaac Yu photo
City arts director Adriane Jefferson (right) with colleague Kim Futrell at Tuesday's "cultural vitality" presser.
More artists and artisans at city farmers’ markets. The return of a historic Black cultural parade to Dixwell Avenue. Pop-up events for young photographers, actors and dancers looking to show off their work and grow their audiences.
New Haveners will see all that and more in the year ahead thanks to a pool of $187,200 awarded to 42 arts organizations and artists across the city for “neighborhood cultural vitality” initiatives.
City officials and local artists gathered at the Stetson Library at the Q House on Dixwell Avenue Tuesday for a press conference celebrating those grants — and the cultural efforts they’ll help fund.
This year’s funding, a mix of public and private dollars, was nearly doubled from last year, said city arts director Adriane Jefferson on Tuesday. She also said the grants featured a revamped, simplified application process.
“My colleagues all across the country struggle to get support for their arts and cultural programs and departments,” Jefferson said. “We do not have those same challenges in our city.”
Inside the Stetson Library Tuesday.
Some of this newly awarded money will go towards familiar annual festivals, including Wooster Square’s cherry blossom celebration, the CT Folk Festival and Green Expo, and Dixwell’s Freddie Fixer Parade.
A significant chunk of cash was also granted to smaller organizations and individual artists for community events. New Haven and Connecticut are seeing historic levels of available arts funding. While state grants are generally only accessible to larger cultural organizations and may involve bureaucratic red tape, Jefferson emphasized on Tuesday that the neighborhood grants are meant for groups of any size.
Some of the recipients of this latest round of awards include the Artseducation Academy ($7,000 for its 10th annual Juneteenth celebration and 6th annual New Haven Hip Hop Conference), Collab ($7,000 for its “Story of Us: New Haven Entrepreneurs” project), Lyric Hall ($6,000 for a restoration project), Collective Consciousness Theatre ($6,000 for a spring projection product), Elm City Lit Fest ($6,5000 for its annual literature festival and podcast), and Kwadwo Adae ($5,500 for “Portraits of Freedom: The Amistad Captives.”)
For a full list of recipients, click here and see the charts at the bottom of this article.
Jefferson also touted the work of long-time city arts coordinator Kim Futrell, who led a 12-week educational campaign on the grant application process to boost the grant’s reach and accessibility.
This year’s recipients, Jefferson said, were also more diverse than ever, supporting the city’s 2022 Cultural Equity Plan in using arts to advance social justice. More than half of the proposals submitted were from first-time applicants, she added.
CitySeed's Cortney Renton with Jefferson.
Grants ranged from $2,450 to $7,000 and must be used before November. Judy Sirota Rosenthal, who has worked as an event photographer in the city for nearly three decades, received $3,500 to launch a new class for young photographers of color and LGBTQ+ photographers.
“I can’t do this forever,” Rosenthal said during a phone interview with the Independent after the event. “I want part of my legacy to be passing on what I know, mentoring people. My hope is I get a lot of diverse people wanting to do this, and that they go into their communities and have an enhanced skill.”
Rosenthal’s four-session class series, taught at the Dixwell Q House, will pair up to 8 beginner to intermediate photographers with area nonprofits, allowing amateurs to build the relationships that could one day help them go professional.
Stetson Librarian and Freddie Fixer Parade board member Diane Brown (center) with Mayor Elicker and Jefferson.
Also coming back to the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods in June is the Freddy Fixer, one of the nation’s oldest Black parades. The event went on hiatus in 2022 amid a lack of funding but looks to be “back on track” for this year, according to parade board member and Stetson Librarian Diane Brown, with a $7,000 grant as well as funding from other sources.
“There’s a lot of history there and generations of families have grown up watching that parade, right on Dixwell Ave,” Brown said.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Mayor Justin Elicker also celebrated the city’s recent appearance in the New York Times’ “52 Places to Go in 2023,” the latest in a series of glowing Times articles re-re-re-discovering New Haven’s “thriving cultural life”.
“Finally people are getting what we knew all along,” Elicker quipped.
