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SLO Arts | California Creative Corps
SLO ARTS
BY CHARLOTTE ALEXANDER
Six county-designated arts agencies, including the San Luis Obispo County Arts Council, have been awarded a collective $4.75 million grant to oversee the California Arts Council’s economic and workforce recovery program, the California Creative Corps (CCC), on the Central Coast. The California State Budget included $60 million in a onetime General Fund allocation to establish the new pilot program.
California Creative Corps Regional Map
The collective grant represents an unprecedented collaboration among six counties, including Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz, Ventura, and Santa Barbara in addition to San Luis Obispo. The agencies will work together to administer the program and serve as primary partners, service providers, and communication conduits in their respective geographic regions.
The responsibilities of the collaboration include:
• Implementing culturally-specific engagement strategies to priority communities
• Mentoring — through professional development, workshops, or other opportunities — individual artists, cultural practitioners, and nonprofit organizations
• Increasing visibility of the work of artists, cultural practitioners, and nonprofit organizations
• Engaging in robust outreach to ensure comprehensive geographic reach for sub-grantee organizations, artists, and cultural practitioners
Upstate
Capital Central Valley & Eastern Central
Central Coast Far South
Bay Area – Other South – Los Angeles & Orange
Bay Area – San Francisco • Managing the application processes for artists and sub-grantee organizations
Inland Empire
The funds are scheduled to be re-granted over the next two years to individual artists, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies in support of pandemic recovery and environmental, civic, and social engagement in California’s most disproportionately impacted communities.
“I am proud to be working with regional partners to administer this grant,” says Jordan Chesnut, programs and development manager of the SLO County Arts Council. “Currently, we have hired a third-party representative to assist us in finding clarity and alignment across all six partners. The intention is that we can shape a collective vision for successful implementation, and that each partner is clear on their roles and responsibilities.”
Modeled on the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s, the funds will support a media, outreach, and engagement campaign that uses a variety of art forms, including visual, performing, and traditional arts, to advance positive community outcomes by creating locally-focused, contextually and culturally sensitive public messaging and work.
Information on applying for CCC funds, which will be implemented in multiple phases over two years, is set to be released this fall. Applicants will be asked to propose projects that support the health, safety, and resiliency of Central Coast communities through the arts. An example of the kind of project that might be supported is a muralist working in a community to design and install a mural to communicate messaging around civic engagement or another of the program’s stated outcomes.
The CCC was developed by the California Arts Council in partnership with the State legislature. Projects are intended to cultivate trust, belonging, community cohesion, and interdependence — particularly in communities that are in the lowest quartile of the California Healthy Places Index (HPI). Neighborhood by neighborhood, the HPI maps data on social conditions that drive health — like education, job opportunities, and clean air and water. This data is used by community leaders, policymakers, academics and other stakeholders to compare the health and well-being of communities, identify health inequities, and quantify the factors that shape health.
Areas to be targeted include public awareness of COVID prevention, climate mitigation, water and energy conservation, and emergency preparedness, as well as civic and social justice engagement.
