The Springfield Arts & Culture Roundtable awarded $19,600 in grants to 11 local groups during its March 19 quarterly meeting. Grants are supported by Community Foundation of the Ozarks.
Three transformative grants, to help emerging arts groups with budgets of less than $150,000, were awarded to:
- The Boys Choir of Springfield, $4,000 to help the group present full concerts;
- The Drury University civic orchestra, $4,000 to expand its young artists regional competition and outreach to schools; and
- The Mid-America Singers, $1,000 to supplement last year’s transformative grant, which allowed the group to offer free concerts, increasing its attendance by 100 percent in two years.
Other local organizations were recognized for their efforts to promote the arts, increase arts sustainability and expand local arts programming. Grant recipients for special projects or programs are:
- American Guild of Organists, local chapter, $1,500 to host a three-day conference of organists from a 10-state region in June;
- Moxie Cinema, $1,500 to fund its Legomation workshops, teaching children stop-motion animation;
- The Missouri State University College of Arts and Letters, $1,500 to fund a guest artist for the third annual downtown jazz festival;
- Springfield Little Theatre and the Springfield Art Museum, $1,500 to book performances at the museum’s auditorium;
- The SRO Lyric Theatre, $600 to produce the “Operazzi” series, a combination of opera, jazz and theater in an open-mic format;
- Urban Districts Alliance, $1,000 to hold a singing contest during First Night, Springfield’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration; and
- The Springfield Regional Arts Council, $1,500 to produce Speaking of the Arts, a series of workshops on professional development topics for artists; and $1,500 to research and archive the collaboration between the city of Springfield, the arts community and philanthropy groups that created The Creamery Arts Center.
A network of community arts organizations, the roundtable’s grant funding is through the Community Foundation of the Ozarks’ field-of-interest funds, made possible by donors of the arts.
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