Ideas Wanted

Sheena Salvino, since July the executive director of Hudson Development Corporation (HDC) and Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency (HCDPA), is planning to apply for a grant from ArtPlace, "a collaboration of top national foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and various federal agencies to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S." The grant program finances arts projects as engines of recovery and economic development. The funding for this round of grants is $12 million, with the average award being about $350,000. Some projects that have been funded in the past are:

• The Sugar Hill Music Center in Detroit--a vacant historic church that is being developed as a space for performance, education, and artist residencies. ($900,000)
• Gore Park in San Jose, which is being developed into an urban plaza and "outdoor living room" that will connect four significant local arts institutions in downtown San Jose. ($500,000)
• A program called Springboard in Cincinnati, which provides business development training and shared retail space to creative entrepreneurs. ($150,000)

Other projects that have received funding can be viewed at the ArtPlace website.   

The grant application is due on November 15, 2011, and Salvino is looking for ideas from the community for an appropriately inventive project to propose. It's a very competitive program, since not-for-profits and municipalities throughout the entire country will be competing for a piece of the $12 million, but it's a very exciting possibility for Hudson and one that deserves our best thinking as a community. Salvino can be contacted by email or by phone at (518) 751-1045.  

“At a time when America is facing severe unemployment, it turns out that a bench, a bush, and a vision–when infused with the arts–can be economic game changers.”

--John Cary, Christian Science Monitor