The arts community in Franklin County is alive and vibrant in a time of economic struggle through financial and moral support from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.
GCAC is an organization dedicated to furthering the arts in Franklin County by providing funding for different groups in the area as well as acting as the community’s voice regarding the arts.
The impact of GCAC on the arts in Columbus can be felt because. according to a 2000 national economic impact study by Americans for the Arts, it funds many of the groups that make up the $265.5 million non-profit arts industry in Columbus.
GCAC is funded primarily by the City of Columbus and Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority Hotel-Motel Tax, which adds a 5.1 percent tax on all room rentals in Franklin County. In 2000, GCAC received $450,000 from the Hotel-Motel Tax, according to the City Auditor report.
Additional funding for GCAC comes from the Ohio Arts Council, which in turn receives its money from a portion of the state budget. In 2001, GCAC received $148,382 of its $5.7 million budget from the Ohio Arts Council, according to GCAC’s 2001 annual report. Most of the remainder of its income is derived from programs that it puts on, such as the Columbus Arts Festival, said Alicia Oddi, grants administrator for GCAC.
GCAC puts much of its funding toward supporting the arts in Columbus and Franklin County, offering operating support to arts groups to help them maintain operations and as project grants and even individual artist fellowships.
To receive funding from GCAC, an organization must be non-profit and must serve Franklin County through the arts, Oddi said.
According to the report, GCAC awarded nearly $2.5 million to community funding projects, including over $2 million in grants to 39 arts organizations and additional funding for technical assistance consultation in 2001.
More specifically, GCAC awarded $1,732,500 in operating support to 17 non-profit arts organizations. Some organizations, such as BalletMet Columbus, received as much as $148,476, and still others such as COSI Columbus received $332,882. Groups with lower budgets and upkeep costs, such as the Actors’ Theater Company and the Ohio Art League, received sums of $10,000 and $8,402, respectively, according to the annual report.
BalletMet has a budget of about $5.2 million for 2002, so the $148,476 given by GCAC this year in operating support is only a small proportion of their overall available funds.
“It’s not quite 3 percent of our total revenue — but it’s vital,” said Cheri Mitchell, executive director of BalletMet.
GCAC is the largest institution that gives grants to BalletMet and is one of its largest single sources of income across the board, she said.
“We must submit a very intense, detailed application to receive an operating assistance grant from the arts council,” she said. “Sometimes we apply for project support too, when big events come up.”
Mitchell believes that having the financial support from GCAC makes much of what BalletMet does possible.
“We provide a tremendous amount of service into the community as well,” she said. “We provide 60 totally paid scholarships all year for students who would not be able to study dance. We will provide 3,000 tickets to our performances this year via social service agencies. The arts council helps to make this possible. They are an essential and critical link in the arts community here.”
Aside from the spending power the GCAC money brings, Mitchell believes that being supported by the arts council can help to bring in funding from other organizations as well.
“Often times, other groups see that you’re being supported by GCAC. They know it’s a rigorous review process — they’re very careful, they have public meetings, and ask for a lot of details from those they fund,” she said. “It lends some credibility to what you’re doing — which is not to say anything about if you aren’t funded — but I think it is recognizable funding, at least in the Central Ohio area.”
“With the smaller organizations, they receive a smaller dollar amount, but it’s usually a larger percentage of their budgets,” she said.
One such smaller organization given grants from GCAC is MadLab, a group dedicated to performing and hosting alternative theater in Central Ohio. MadLab receives support grants from GCAC to help the company put on some of its larger productions.
In 2002, MadLab received a total of $7,900 from GCAC which was divided into two grants: $4,300 for its sizable production “Sound and Fury” and $3,600 for its annual Theatre Roulette, said Greg McGill, artistic director of MadLab.
The budgets for these shows are about $9,000 for “Sound and Fury” and about $8,000 for Theatre Roulette, making the GCAC grants nearly half of the total budgets, he said.
“We’ve had a pretty good history. They’ve been quite helpful,” he said. “Without the grants it would be much tougher to get by. We run on a tight budget as it is. It’s a big help for a small group like MadLab.”
Although MadLab has received various grants from GCAC, including both tech and project assistance, this was to be the last time the council will give money to support Theatre Roulette, the group’s annual amateur playwright showcase, due to its growing success and stability.
“The purpose of the grants is to help you get your project going, and now that we’re going, they want to find other projects to help out,” he said.
Theatre Roulette has been MadLab’s largest production since it was created. This year’s production will include nine one-act plays from the winning local amateur playwrights who auditioned scripts for the production. The production will run for four straight weekends in May.
Along with the financial support that makes its productions easier to manage, McGill said that GCAC has done consultation work for MadLab and stays involved with the arts community in general, sometimes inviting members to GCAC functions, such as guest lectures.
Another of the ways GCAC funds Franklin County’s arts is the individual artist fellowships that are given in the amount of $5,000 to outstanding local artists who apply to be considered. The fellowships are given in the disciplines of crafts, film-video, creative writing, music composition, choreography-movement arts and visual arts.
“Fellowships are awarded on the artistic merit of work that is already complete, which is decided using a blind panel process,” Oddi said. “We bring in panelists from outside of Ohio to do that. We give out fellowships every year. We do visual arts on the even numbered years, for example, and we usually give out six fellowships for that in those years.”
