HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-11-02-ARTS-minLexington Council for the Arts
Wednesday, November 2 2022
7:00 PM– 8:30 PM
Location: Via Zoom. See below for remote participation instructions.
Pre-Meeting Tasks
Review of draft minutes from September 12, 2022 and October 5, 2022 meetings
Attendance:
Present: David, Hoose, Steve Poltorzycki , Ashley Rooney, Anwell Tsai, Lisa
Herbert, Marie Hewes
Absent: Shalini, Kakar, Jessie Chen, Doug Urban
Guests: Claudia Lach
Recording Secretary: Marie Hewes
Meeting start time: 7:07 PM
•Call to order : 7:07 PM
•Secretar y’s repor t (Marie) : The Minutes from September and October meetings were
Unanimously approved.
•Treasurer’s repor t (Steve)
❖Nothing new from last time
➢State Account : Used for grantees. People have a year to complete their
project.
➢Town account : around $4,000.00
➢Local account : $4,700.00 left.
•Grant cycle: over view of the process ( Anwell)
❖Anwell has been reorganizing the for mat of the panel book to simplify the work
for ever ybody. A folder was created for all the members. In that folder grant
proposals are divided by themes and a spreadsheet summarizes all the important
infor mation. Each member is now able to take notes and rate each proposal on a
scale 1-5 , with 5 indicating that one strongly supports funding a project.
➢Ever ybody should receive an invitation for the google folder.
❖The Sub-Committee has reviewed the criteria and will reconvene to discuss the
projects that receive a 3 or are borderline.
❖The time it takes to g o through the grant proposals is about 6 hours.
❖We have $ 9,100.00 . The council gets 5%. We also have money back from
grantees who did not complete their project.
❖We will need to decide whether to allocate up to 20% of the MCC funding for
one of our own projects.
Calendar
❖The ratings of the proposals are due on November 15th.
❖After the 15th, we Sub-committee will meet before Thanksgiving to discuss the
projects that receive a 3 or are borderline. .
❖During our December meeting, we will vote on the amount of funding each
grantee receives.
❖By the end of December, we need to infor m the g rantees that we are not funding
them. We need to send the letters as early as possible because there is an appeal
that we must consider. We need to resolve those appeals before we make our
final decision.
❖December 7th and January 4th are the two voting meetings.So we need to meet
the quor um ( which is a requirement).
❖Mid-January, we must be ready to send a report.
Questions we discussed:
❖Question about criteria / confidentiality
➢3 criteria :
■The proposal is related to various for ms of art.
■There is a benefit for a variety of public.
■We cannot discriminate
➢Extra criteria: Qualification, accessibility, favoring lexington artists and
venues.
➢We clarified some aspects of the criteria ( what is a new project?, do we
have data about organizations that have already received funding?…) A
good strateg y is to score as if all projects are new, and then to go back
and back and look at previous fundings.
➢Applicants should not know how we vote, they should only know the
process.
•Discover y Day debrief (lessons lear ned)(Steve)
❖Elsie worked with the kids and brought a lot of people to the stand. Craft
generated a lot of movement and the parents of the children showed interest in
the newsletter, the posters created by Shalini with pictures of the utility boxes,
Haiku and doors.
❖The newsletter has been appreciated.
➢One important thing is to generate enough content for the newsletter.
➢Using constant contact, we can see who clicked on the links, so we are
finding out that the newsletter is useful.
➢Some things we could add : spotlight some events.
➢We also have several projects going on that could be publicized.
➢Anwell is sug gesting bringing some musical instr uments for students, or
cameras at the next Discovery Day.
➢Hand out to people examples of who and what got a grant. Make sure
that people know who we are and what we do.
•FY 2023 project updates
−Dance Around the World (Elsie)
❖Team from Israeli, India, korea, China, one ballet, Tap dancers,
❖Date of March 17th : St Patrick’s Day
❖Would like a write up to get additional Town money. Steve will send an example.
−Lexington Laughs (Lisa)
❖The project is a comedy Night : January 14th at 7 Pm location to TBD :
possibilities include:
➢the Venue
➢Grace Chapel
➢The Depot- The acoustic is not great.
➢Knights of Columbus
➢A Church
■A smaller place could have better acoustics and be more
appropriate for this type of event.
❖One hour long event : professional comedian and reach out to the High School
for some improv kids.
❖Start time is 7PM. Pay kids or offer community ser vice to help set up.
❖Update the website ( Anwell completed this).
❖The event should be a fundraiser.
➢Lex Rep is definitely looking to help refugees :This is a local
organization and Ashley has a connection.
➢Donations have to be cash or check
➢We need to work on the budget : It includes the venue, the fee for the
comedian and a janitor
➢Cost is probably around $ 1,200.00
❖Advertising :
➢We could also do PR “ save the date” : PG 13 humor
➢Lisa has already received 5 quotes from comedians ( 450 dollars to 1,000
dollars)
−Bikeway fair y homes (Ashley)
❖Will take place during Discover y day.
−Porchfest (Steve)
❖Steve met with a friend who organized Porchfest in Arlington.: finding the right
neighborhood is the first step[: It should be a cohesive area around 10 houses
with 2 bands per site : between 1PM and 3 PM
➢Moonhill from Wilson far m : walkable neighborhood :
➢liberty Heights : small houses close together. Find people who live in
these neighborhoods to agree to have this event.
➢Anwell : Close to Estabrook ( Hardee? street)
➢Easier close to the Center.
➢Best dates : June or July
−Bird sculptures
❖Project by Carol Rose : Birds sculptures would be created on tr unks.. An artist
has been located. She would like us to be the umbrella and she has reached out
to Munroe. This project would not give us too much work. It is already approved
by DPW
-Advertising
❖Ashley would do the publicity to get more visibility.
❖Spotlighting a g rantee would be great ( inter view) and write a brief write-up.
❖We could also ask the grantees to write 300 words about their work.
Steve will ask for a write up and a photo.
Meeting Adjourned at: 8:34PM
Motioned by: Steve
Seconded by: Ashley