Forwarding an e-mail sent out to arts supporters in Santa Monica, Calif., by Jan Williamson, executive director of the 18th Street Arts Center in that city:

Dear Friends,

You guys rock!

Thanks to all of you the City Council of Santa Monica approved the proposed arts and culture budget and then some... Because of your emails, letters, and testimony at City Hall, Santa Monica will be giving new awards to individual artists, new awards for arts education projects and expanding their support for nonprofit arts organizations. Very few cities in the US currently give out grants to individual artists. So this is a milestone that we can all hope will encourage other cities to follow suit.

The June vote was unanimous! We knew that the new arts education grant program would be an easy sell to the City Council, but we were not confident that the artist grant program would get passed. So I really want to thank you and express my sincere appreciation to you all for your advocacy. I know that the City Council heard you all, and it made the difference. Plus, in addition to funding these new grant programs, adding a new staff position (to help with the added work), the Council also voted to give Cultural Affairs $100,000 in one-time funds for the maintenance of the City’s art collection. In otherwords – we got MORE than what we asked for.

   

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