Flushing Town Hall To Award Funding To Queens County Artists Through NYSCA Regrant Program

Effective immediately, Flushing Town Hall (FTH) has accepted the responsibility of administering over $100,000 in regrants funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for artists and arts organizations based in Queens, New York. Formerly known as NYSCA's "Decentralization" program (DEC for short), the program is being rebranded as "Statewide Community Regrants" (SCR for short) and is intended to support artists and organizations in every county across New York State. NYSCA was a pioneer of this model of arts regrants, a model that has been adopted by numerous other states and municipalities (including New York City).

Flushing Town Hall's mission is to serve the global communities of Queens through programming that celebrates and uplifts the full range of cultural diversity in the borough. In addition to music, dance, visual arts, theatrical, and educational programming, FTH already offers a wide range of artist services, including space grants for artists to develop new work, professional development workshops, networking conversations, and more. The new regranting program will complement these other offerings and enable FTH to fulfill its role as an arts council (FTH was founded in 1979 as Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts, the organization's legal name).

The regrants administered by FTH will fund arts and culture projects created and presented in Queens, in order to enrich and enliven the community.

"NYSCA supports local artists and non-profits by administering vital funding across all regions of our great state." NYSCA Executive Director Mara Manus said. "Our Fiscal Year 2022 strategic goals prioritize expanding eligibility and increasing access for the full and richly diverse ecosystem of artists and arts organizations of New York. NYSCA regrants are a critical piece of NYSCA's mission to develop and support the diverse spectrum of artists living and creating in New York State."

Flushing Town Hall's Executive and Artistic Director Ellen Kodadek says:

"NYSCA is an incredibly impactful agency in New York State, offering much more than funding to the artists and organizations in New York: It provides leadership, vision, and integrity, and has been a major force uniting the arts community as a whole. We pledge to uphold NYSCA's high standards of integrity and community responsiveness as we take over this program, and we invite the artists and arts organizations of Queens to hold us accountable to this pledge.

We are also tremendously grateful to Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature for increasing funding to NYSCA this year. At Flushing Town Hall, we believe the arts are essential and that artists are vital to the health and well-being of communities and neighborhoods. It's imperative to support artists in their creative endeavors in which we all benefit so greatly, particularly these days, when arts and culture are essential to New York State's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, economically, emotionally, and socially. Thanks to NYSCA, we are thrilled to offer these new grants programs to support artists and arts organizations in Queens."

Ms. Kodadek, as well as several of her staff members, already have experience in working with NYSCA on regrant programs, including Deputy Director Sami Abu Shumays and Dan Bamba, who has been promoted to Director of Arts Services, and who will be directly administering the program.

Flushing Town Hall will release grant guidelines and applications October 4, 2021 along with information sessions and grantwriting workshops for prospective applicants throughout the fall. Grants will be open to Queens-based artists and community organizations to hold public arts and culture programs in the borough throughout 2022.

All of this information will be posted online at: https://www.flushingtownhall.org/artist-services Artists and organizations with questions or interested in learning more are invited to reach out to Dan Bamba at: dbamba@flushingtownhall.org