Details To Be Released at the Sept. 27 Essex County Arts & Culture Summit at The Cabot
Essex County Community Foundation (ECCF) announced today that it is making an additional $1.3 million investment in arts, culture and the creative ecosystem of Essex County.
This next phase of ECCF’s Creative County Initiative (CCI), which was successfully piloted in 2018 with a $750,000 investment from the Barr Foundation and ECCF, is made possible through a second investment of $1 million over three years from Barr. ECCF will raise the additional $300,000.
This partnership with Barr and its Creative Commonwealth Initiative will allow ECCF to expand on our pilot phase efforts, which included $300,000 in partnership grants to artists, nonprofits, business and community leaders for public art and creative placemaking projects.
“What we have accomplished collectively through CCI in the last two years is a testament to how many people in Essex County care about the vital role arts and culture play in our communities,” said ECCF President and CEO Beth Francis. “We are so thrilled – and extremely grateful – to continue the critical work of elevating arts and culture in Essex County’s cities and towns with the Barr Foundation.”
ECCF is one of a cohort of five community foundations across the state being funded by Barr’s Creative Commonwealth Initiative, an investment in the unique potential of community foundations to build local networks for arts and culture and to help the creative sector become more sustainable, equitable and accessible statewide.
The second phase of ECCF’s Creative County Initiative will once again focus heavily on partnership grants, which brought to life – and continue to bring to life – 12 public art and creative placemaking projects across our region, from Lynn to Newburyport and many communities in between.
“We will continue our systems-based approach to community placemaking and public art projects, and encourage deep, intentional collaboration across the arts, municipal, business, and philanthropic sectors,” said ECCF COO & VP for Community Leadership Stratton Lloyd.
You can find out much more about a second phase of grantmaking and additional details on ECCF’s new $1.3 million investment in arts and culture in the region on Sept. 27 at the 2019 Essex County Arts & Culture Summit.
“Many of the projects funded by the pilot phase of ECCF’s Creative County Initiative were incubated at the 2018 Arts Summit,” said Francis. “This year’s event is again the ideal opportunity for artists, nonprofit organizations, local businesses and community leaders to come together to form new collaborative partnerships, and generate new ideas that can have a meaninful impact on their cities and towns to shape the future of arts, culture and creativity in Essex County.”
The 2019 Essex County Arts and Culture Summit is happening on Sept. 27, 2019 from 9am – 4pm at The Cabot in Beverly. See the full schedule of events and register at www.eccf.org/arts-summit.
