Over $132K Distributed To Local Artists

The city and the Arts Council have distributed over $132,000 in grants to 326 local artists, freelancers, and small nonprofits so far in an effort to keep New Haven’s creative economy afloat during the Covid-19 crisis.

City Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism Director Adriane Jefferson gave that update Friday afternoon during Mayor Justin Elicker’s daily coronavirus-related virtual press briefing held online via the Zoom teleconferencing app and on YouTube Live.

The city currently has 1,324 verified positive Covid-19 cases and 43 related fatalities.

Just under a month after the city’s arts division and the Arts Council for Greater New Haven announced the creation of the New Haven Creative Sector Relief Fund, Jefferson said that the public-private partnership has been busy getting money out the door in increments of between $400 and $500 each.

She said that the fund initially planned to distribute $1,000 grants to artists in need. Then the city and the Arts Council decided to halve that amount in order to reach a broader cross-section of the 500-plus people who have applied for money so far. 

“People are going to need this money for a long time,” Jefferson said, which is why there is no deadline in sight for when this relief fund might stop distributing grants.

Click here to apply for a grant, and here to donate to the fund.

Jefferson said that the fund has raised over $57,000 from individual contributions so far, as well as $20,000 directly from the Arts Council and $50,000 from New Haven Festivals, Inc., the nonprofit arm of the city’s Arts, Culture and Tourism division.

When asked for a list of creative sector relief fund recipients to date, Jefferson declined to share any, saying that the city wanted to get permission from individual recipients first before sharing their names with the public.

Click here for an Arts Paper article from earlier in the month with interviews with individual artists who received some of the first round of grant distributions.

Other updates included:

• Elicker and Asst. Superintendent Paul Whyte (pictured) spoke to the challenges that many New Haven Public Schools students and teachers have faced in transitioning on such short notice to online-only learning during the pandemic. ​“We don’t want to grade only on privilege,” Whyte said. So school administrators and the Board of Education are trying to come up with a grading policy that takes into account the fact that many students do not have reliable Internet access at home and that students are dealing with a host of other distractions and traumas associated with the pandemic as they try to complete their studies. ​“We’re looking for a policy that can support all of these families.”

“For some, we’ve lost a semester of schooling,” Elicker said. That doesn’t take away from the hard work that many teachers and administrators and students have put in to making this transition to online learning, he said. But it is an unfortunate reality considering the significant obstacles that everyone involved has faced in ensuring that students continue to receive a quality education amidst such turmoil. ​“This is a very challenging situation.”

“We want to make sure we’re not punitive,” added Whyte. Safety is the schools’ first concern. Everything else follows.

• Elicker said that the city is at this moment still accepting applications for young New Haveners interested in participating in the annual summer Youth at Work program. ​“There is a caveat in large capital letters,” he said. ​“We do not know if we will be able to place students this summer. The staff in our youth services department has been working hard to interact with the usual work sites” that employ young people through this program over the summer. ​“We have a few weeks to make a decision on this,” he said. ​“At the moment, we’re evaluating the situation.”

• Health Director Maritza Bond (pictured) said that nursing home infection numbers have remained stable at Yale New Haven Hospital’s Grimes Center since her last update earlier this week, that RegalCare at New Haven now has a total 24 positive residents, and that Mary Wade has an additional three staff staff out of work and pending testing results. She said that the state Department of Public Health has not alerted the city as to any ​“major concerns” at any local nursing homes or assisted care facilities yet. The state health department has been conducting site visits at every nursing home and assisted care facility throughout the state over the past week to assess their available levels of personal protective equipment and to check in on each facility’s infection control programs.

• Elicker said that the new walk-up testing sites run by Cornell Scott Hill Health Center in Dixwell and Fair Haven Community Health Care on Grand Avenue continue to receive a lot of public interest, and that he and his staff plan to announce the location of a third neighborhood testing site run by Greenwich-based doctor Steven Murphy in the coming days.

Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde told the Independent that her clinic’s testing site at 374 Grand Ave. initially planned to conduct four tests an hour, six hours a day when it opened on Wednesday. She said they received 87 calls on Wednesday and 121 calls on Thursday from people requesting to be tested. So they decided to double their testing capacity on Thursday and Friday, and added new Saturday hours for the site.

From Wednesday through Friday, she said, Fair Haven Community Health Care conducted 103 coronavirus tests. She said they have 55 more tests scheduled for Saturday.

She said the site’s current weekday capacity is for a total of 48 tests. ​“We are looking to see if we can push that a bit, but not certain yet,” she told the Independent. ​“Lots of factors including workforce and availability of testing kits. We are committed to doing our best to get testing for our community.”

• Elicker (pictured) noted that Friday is the city’s 382nd birthday. Even though social distancing mandates prevent any kind of in-person celebration similar to last year’s at City Hall from taking place, he said that the Covid-19 crisis has brought out so much of the ​“compassionate and supportive nature” that he thinks represents the best of New Haven. ​“I’m so proud to be the mayor of a city that has countless examples of the values I think are so important for us to be a strong community.”