Davis Islands Today

Last month, Julie Torres’ art column mentioned the unusual circumstances in which the Arts Council of Hillsborough County awarded 11 grants rather than the usual 10. We stand by that story, but want you to read the two responses we received from the Hillsborough County Arts Council. The first of these, from Jenny Carey, is below. Please also see the letter from Hillsborough County Arts Council board member Denise Chavez.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
by Jenny Carey, Director of Program Services, Hillsborough County Arts Council

Thank you for the great coverage of local artists in your last edition of the Davis Islands Community News. It is so important to have coverage of the arts in our local papers and the artists featured are all well deserving.

The Arts Council of Hillsborough County is excited to have such a strong group of Individual Artist Grant recipients. We are grateful Davis Island residents now know more about them.

Unfortunately some of the information in your article about the grant program is erroneous. As this is a public process, I hope the following information would be helpful to the community.

A panel of arts professionals reviews and scores the applications and makes recommendations of funding amounts. The recommendation then goes to the Arts Council board.

In this case, there was very little difference in the 10th and the 11th persons score, then a sizeable distance to the score of the 12th applicant. The Arts Council felt because of that minute difference the 11th person should be included in the funding, thereby reducing the other grants by about $180. There were no well-placed phone calls. Of course, if any artist is unhappy with receiving $1820, they could easily return the money and we will put it in the budget for the next year.

We are pleased to be able to offer grants during these economic times. Thank you for letting me clarify information about this important program for our local artists. Arts Council staff is always available to answer questions about any of our grants programs. More information can be found at www.tampaarts.com.

Jenny Carey

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Davis Islands. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.