Bangor Cultural Commission reviews grant guidelines and budget proposals

[0:53] Jennifer Snow: As long as you only have one vote, okay, I don't think I have anything to report. We have some things in progress, but a lot of it we won't know about until a little bit later this year, so I guess no report for me. Financial report, any questions? I saw your note to Sarah about the theater bill. I haven't looked at it yet. Was it the amount that we expected? Yeah. Okay. Then it's not quite up to date yet, but by next time it will be. That's great. The meeting will be done by the time we have Zoom accessible. All right. Committee reports. Jennifer's not here, so no grant committee reports. [2:01] Speaker B (unidentified): I'm here. Oh, how are you? Appreciate it. [2:06] Nina Earley: I'm lurking. Lurking behind a picture. Yes. [2:09] Jennifer Snow: So we don't have streaming, but we are live online? On Zoom. Oh. [2:14] Nina Earley: Cool. Yeah. Hi. I can see you now. Great. Hi. Hi. [2:22] Jennifer Snow: Perfect. Sorry, I didn't realize. Anything to report? No. [2:28] Nina Earley: No, I know that the applications are open for grants, so hopefully we'll start getting some of those in. And I just need to form a committee of a couple of people so that we can, when they're in after the 1st of April, we can go through those to be able to present to the commission at LARC. Yeah. [2:52] Jennifer Snow: When we have them, Sarah will email you and include me to send all of the applications, and then you can just email the whole commission to see who would like to join a meeting to get, and then we'll use that as the selection for the grant committee. Fantastic. I think that might be the easiest way to do it. And usually when we do that, I mean, whatever system you have works, but we use a doodle and you could just get everybody's availability pretty easily that way. Cool. Quick question, because I missed the financial [3:36] Nina Earley: financial report has the art tober. Have we closed out art tober? Did I miss that? [3:45] Jennifer Snow: It's not officially pulled out yet from this, what's in the packet right, but we did receive it this morning and I think it was a thousand dollars as expected, so sorry, [4:08] Speaker D (unidentified): I'm jumping between the windows here. [4:12] Jennifer Snow: If we take a look at the, that means the 1,000 will come out of the $1,448.30 that are still in our October budget. And so the $448.30 will go into the grant bucket,, which puts us almost exactly at 10,000 for the spring. [4:40] Nina Earley: Fantastic. Thank you. Isn't that great? I [4:49] Jennifer Snow: had one more thought. Oh, the city posted about the fact that the grants are open. If you all have anybody you know who might be interested in applying, feel free to let them know. Feel free to post it on your own socials if you have social media accounts, or yeah, feel free to share widely, or send the link right to different people. Really, I mean, we only have 10,000. We're not going to be able to give more than that, but the more applicants we get, the better our argument is for getting more money next year. All right, any other grant committee questions? Cool, cultural asset committee, nothing to report. Yeah, we will talk a whole lot more about it as we get into summer and budgets. As we know more. Yeah, well, our cover committee, yeah, not a lot to report. Yeah, I think I'd. Like the, I thought about targeting a meeting in March, but it seemed a little early to me. April's still early, but probably a good time to get started, so maybe mid-April. You know, think about whether you want to participate, that committee. Hopefully a lot of people that did in the past continue, and hopefully a few new people do too. It's, it's not a heavy lift. A lot, you know, I when I first came on to it thinking of, you know, a month of art activities, that's going to be a lot, and it's a pretty tight. Package that the commission under Nina and Holly before and kind of put together, where we really focus on a singular event at the beginning of the month, you know, usually the first couple of days of the month, to kind of highlight and present the award for like, what is it called? It's the Bangor Artist of the Year or something like that. Bangor Arts Award, yeah. Bangor Arts Award, which is like an annual award. And so a lot of the work is on that and the event, you know, certainly we can look to do some other things, and maybe starting in April allows us to brainstorm a little bit. Bangor does a, you know, a sidewalk art festival during that time frame too, and so you know that, you know, probably something we get credit for that we don't do, and then you know all sorts of organizations have events that month. So be great to kind of brainstorm whether we want to build on and grow out what we're already doing, or just, you know, do a great job at executing what the existing plan is. So mid-April, great. Yeah, I. [7:22] Speaker D (unidentified): Think what would be awesome if we, if the frames were done in Pickering Square by then, at the bus depot, to showcase art, you know, stuff like for our first time for the Arctober, and you know, that's kind of ambitious because I don't think they're done yet, but that would be really cool to open, you know, have an opening during Arctober to showcase. Oh, that's for students working, those frames has that much taken so long, but hopefully, yeah, we'll just see the year, just an idea, they [7:49] Jennifer Snow: don't have an end. They got a lot done, they did get a lot done last year, yeah, so hopefully Yeah, if anybody else has ideas, always feel free to bring them to this meeting or join the Artober Committee. So I'll send out an email to people, maybe with a doodle poll, and so maybe participate in the poll if you're thinking about joining, and if not, then no need. Good. All right. Oh, and just a reminder that everybody does have to be on at least one committee. So you have to pick one. You can also choose more than one. All right, discussion about grant disbursements for [8:33] Speaker F (unidentified): purchasing items. Yeah, I just wanted to bring back because we talked about this at the January meeting that there weren't a lot of us here, so I wanted to just bring it back because it's grant season. We did get a few concern comments from a few, a couple of the counselors about the use of the grants to buy specific items. It's so hard to explain because it was really the lights for some theater. They felt like, well, that's, you know, not really a program. It's more of an item and, you know, that's maintenance or operations. And so they had expressed a concern about that, and now that we're going into grants this year, I just want to put it back out there to the commission, you know, when we meet with people sometimes that are making a grant application and they'll ask us, you know, what do you think the commission will want to see, so I just want to kind of firm up like what are your thoughts on it, you know, so that we can give [9:47] Speaker D (unidentified): of good advice to people that are applying for the grant. What's the question? So last year [10:00] Speaker F (unidentified): Some theater asked for funds, which the commission recommended for to buy lights, and so the council said, a couple of the counselors said, we think that these funds should be going to programs and not, you know, stuff, things, and you know, because they saw the lights as operations and maintenance and not a new program or a program. So, you know, there wasn't a, an overall agreement or disagreement with counselors, but there were a couple of counselors that were really adamant about that this should just be for programs. So I wanted to put it back out there to the commission because you sometimes we meet with people who are going to file a grant and they'll say, well, what do you think the commission wants to see, and we just want to give good advice. [10:57] Nina Earley: So I'm looking at the grant application and it doesn't say anything about it having to be for programs, so I think especially for this time that as the application is already out and been advertised that it's not appropriate for us to change it at, but if we want to change it for the fall cycle, fall of 2026, that we need to make sure that 's updated and specific so that people aren't having to ask us and then getting perhaps different answers because we don't have specifics on what the city feels is appropriate. Okay, that's their [11:51] Jennifer Snow: strongly. Yeah, I don't think we should make. I don't think we can make a change to the current cycle. However, this can certainly be part of the conversations also, as we have budget conversations for the funding for the next cycle. Okay, I am a strong proponent of this being an open grant for what organizations think they need to provide programming. It's in the past been not just an event grant or a more restricted grant. In my mind also, and happy to have this conversation again open here and also with council, theater lighting isn't an operations or maintenance expense, because without lighting, a production doesn't exist. You can't put on a theater event without lighting. And I've been to the, it's the new space at the mall, right? Where Psalm Theater now is. I saw a show there recently. Wouldn't have been very good without lighting. And so that's, to me, that's part of the actual programming and the event. However, I understand that different people have different opinions and I think yeah any thoughts [13:18] Speaker D (unidentified): From I agree with you, I think it's part of the medium, you know, I mean, just like costumes in the ballet or paint for an artist, it's part of the medium. It's not, you know, if we were paying for their physical space to put off, like the rent for the building to put it on, I think that would be different, but this is part [13:35] Jennifer Snow: of their program. Yeah, it's not office lighting, it's theater production, I agree. [13:42] Nina Earley: Lighting designers are artists, and that is their medium, 100%, just like a costume, you know, fabric is the medium of a costume designer, or lines are the medium of the actor. The lighting is there is what they're using. But outside of, you know, that very specific, they were uncomfortable paying with paying for lights. I think if, and I agree that we shouldn't be limiting some of this stuff, but if the city requires it, then I think it needs to be very specific. Okay, I do have a question [14:24] Speaker D (unidentified): what is the purpose of the grant? I'm [14:30] Nina Earley: gonna read it from the application. Yeah, it says that the mission is to promote the development of Bangor as a regional arts center that nurtures the artistic and cultural expression of its diverse peoples, to nurture and what, to nurtures the artistic and cultural expression of its diverse peoples, expression. Okay, thank you. 're welcome [15:01] Jennifer Snow: I'll just weigh in and say, I mean, I could see it going either way, you know, so at some level we serve at the will of the pleasure of the council. So if there's a majority of the council that prefer not to do it, I think we could live in that world. You know, I'd say at least my experience with Penobscot Theatre, it's easier to get grants for things than it is for programming. So you know, at some level, it might be a good contrast to have grants that are for programming and a lot easier to get light in grants or you know to do brick work on the opera house kind of thing than to say hey we you know we want to do a program. So I mean, you know, I guess the counter argument is that, you know, that provides kind of a unique opportunity for focused on programming, and then I guess the last point I'd make, which I don't know if it's even helpful, is that, you know, I mean, people can kind of juggle what they're asking for, right? I mean, if some theater or any theater wanted lighting, they would ask for money they were going to put into a production, save that money from their budget and buy the light in any way. So, you know, I mean, it's a bit of a gray area there. When somebody works out their budget, they're gonna figure out what they ultimately are trying to accomplish either way. I think in my mind, the whole point of why it's so open is because we don't know what organizations need and we don't want to be the keeper of the ideas. We want to be able to support lots of ideas. And I think that part of what makes culture in a small town great is that we get to support, you know, things that we couldn't come up with. [16:33] Speaker G (unidentified): A related point. Oh, sorry, Jennifer, go ahead. [16:37] Nina Earley: I was just going to say, and as a counterpoint to what Sundance said, I think for an organization that's larger like PTC, Some of those things may be easier to get grants for, but as a small organization with a much smaller budget, their needs are significantly different. And so by funding something like lights, it can actually help in this instance, some theater company with their entire season, and they're looking at it as a seasonal and beyond thing that can benefit them as opposed to well we have this one show and we want to be able to put it on they put on a lot of shows and that light is going to last them 10 15 years good point [17:31] Speaker G (unidentified): oh great points i also think that something like lighting is a concrete thing and in a way it might be easier to ask for money for something concrete and measurable than when putting on a performance a lot of times aspects are very subjective that's [17:54] Jennifer Snow: just another point yeah I think the size of the organization is a really important point because we also as our commission have run into problems where because our budget is $25,000 for the year 22500 we don't qualify for a lot of grants so it's harder to get additional money to supplement that because like the minimum operating budget of an organization has to be X to be able to qualify for certain grants and we don't have that qualification with this grant. [18:33] Nina Earley: And my final thought as somebody who's written grants for a small theater organization, like some theater company is, people, individual donations or sponsorships, people like to give money for the pretty things like costumes and something like lights that is seen as kind of boring because they don't understand how that they wouldn't be able to see the show without the lights can make it that's another barrier for getting individual or local sponsorship donations that they might be able to get for other things [19:13] Speaker G (unidentified): I [19:16] Speaker D (unidentified): read in charge of the filter for these grants for the applicant so can we create a structure within the Commission about this is our priority one two three so applications come in the filtration system will be more or less aligned with what we're trying to establish as a committee I mean the [19:39] Speaker F (unidentified): Commission can establish a theme you know sometimes grant programs will say this year you know we're you know we're looking to do public art projects or whatever it is. So you can do that you haven't you've sort of taken Nina's approach of we don't know what these organizations need. And so you've left it open. [Speaker B (unidentified): But I mean,] that's definitely a conversation the commission should consider. [20:12] Jennifer Snow: And we do discuss as a committee and then also whole commission and if we often will rank or just like separate them out by merit or by impact so we sometimes will we do have an actual grid that we can use sometimes it's not that helpful because it ends up over complicating things if we just have four applicants and they're all great and we all agree that they're all great then we split the money and that's it we don't need to like go through a ranking and numbering system because it ends up being just more complicated than it's worth. But we do talk through, right? Like how many people does this impact? Is this something that is free for attendees? Is this something that lots of people can enjoy or is it something that's for a very small specific audience? So we talk through it in that way. and right if we want to set up something more official we certainly can what I was thinking [21:19] Speaker D (unidentified): is and I don't know please let me know what you think here because this might be a little bit radical but if we can create a system where individuals individual artists are because the mission of the city is to nurture and express so how do we nurture and let people express themselves in order to benefit the city because i believe from a business perspective that giving the money to an individual artist you say that you're a dj like two thousand dollars for your equipment might go really far than for a company that has already established their business and they need two thousand dollars for lights i'm flipping this from a cultural to a little bit of a business perspective because for i'm not an artist i'm a business person but i think individual artists can use that money and it can help them go much further than a company what do you think definitely [22:30] Jennifer Snow: Open to, yeah, figuring out a weighted system or something. I will say we don't often get very many [22:38] Speaker B (unidentified): individual applications. It's usually maybe one. I was gonna say something if in here I think [22:45] Speaker D (unidentified): there's been one. So are these usually for like a Zillman? Yeah, there's one a [22:52] Jennifer Snow: few years ago for paintings for an exhibition. The book festival started as an individual applicant and then he built a non-profit because it started [23:10] Speaker D (unidentified): growing. That's awesome. I think in my eyes that's what I would be aiming for with my contribution is when we have someone with an idea and energy to create something and we support them and then they're being able to grow because they're going to do the same thing with other people. Do these individual artists usually have companies that they operate under? Because if they have a nonprofit [23:40] Jennifer Snow: then they apply as a nonprofit and if it's an individual artist like a painter usually doesn't have, I mean they may have an LLC for tax purposes but they're not [23:48] Speaker D (unidentified): usually. Do we know when these nonprofits are like single like solo operator the [23:56] Jennifer Snow: the nonprofits have to be a 501c3 to be able to be eligible. Okay and then i guess it's just a [24:04] Speaker D (unidentified): little more research of who sits behind the application. Yeah i [24:13] Jennifer Snow: think you should join the [24:14] Speaker D (unidentified): press. Thank you. All right any other questions on the items? i guess just one more thing on what was [24:27] Speaker G (unidentified): is an organization that has the credentials to be a 501 whatever, is in some respects perhaps more reliable than an individual artist who might do a wonderful job and might be very adept at it, but sometimes there isn't a follow through and a finished product the way you might see in a group. I'm not putting down artists. [25:00] Speaker D (unidentified): No, I hear you completely. And what I'm circling back for is the city's mission. Because we do what we do based on what the people before us sit down and create it. [25:11] Speaker G (unidentified): I think we should have money for individual artists and groups. Sure, yeah. And the city gives us community. [25:22] Speaker D (unidentified): I agree with you, and I think it's going to be a very easy way to increase our grants if we can prove to the city how many people we have supported who have actually succeeded. Now it is, it is based on integrity, you're right, but i really doubt that someone will come here get the city's money and then ditch the project unless there is something really that [25:49] Speaker G (unidentified): happening in their life. Right, i like to think that too. i [25:56] Nina Earley: think the most important part at this point is for us to make sure that the open application cycle is getting into the hands of those individual artists as well as the groups. And I don't know how to make that happen, but I think that each of us making sure that we're reaching out to the artists that we know that might have projects that need that funding is going to be, you know, because once again, the more applications that we have, the easier it is for us to prove to the city that this is a worthwhile use of their funds. So making sure that we're getting it out there on an individual basis, I think, is where we need to be focusing right now. And then maybe after this cycle closes, then we look at how we address what we're going to fund starting with the fall 2026 cycle so that we can have it prepared before the applications go live that [27:06] Jennifer Snow: Sounds really good. I think that would be a great thing, right, for the grants committee once the cycle's done to meet and talk through the current application, if we want to recommend any changes, if we have any ideas for how to improve the overall system, I think all of that is on the table. And then we can discuss, all of us, and then we can bring it to city council. Maybe part of the budget discussions or maybe a separate meeting at some point. Would anybody like to volunteer to draft an email to go out to the list of emails we've collected over the last few years of artists in the Bangor area? Area. We have a whole list of past Arts Award nominees, artists who've been involved in murals and other events, people who've generally been on our radar. We have a whole section of teachers. Anybody interested in drafting an email? I can draft an email. [28:08] Speaker D (unidentified): All right, cool. Can you give me the ones that you need from me or the... [28:12] Jennifer Snow: Yeah, we really just want to let people know that the grant application is open. That's it. And that I don't know that we have to get too specific, but I would send a link right to the PDF. It's on the city website in our section, so it has to say [28:31] Speaker D (unidentified): That the grant is open, yeah, and due April 1st also. [28:41] Jennifer Snow: Who is in charge of the application structure, the city? Well, we drafted it, right? I know we made some edits to it a few years ago when I was first on the commission, and then we recommend the edits. [28:56] Nina Earley: to the city and the city approves. Yeah, and I think that there are some edits that could be made again after this grant cycle closes just to kind of a make it simpler, although it's a fairly simple grant application right now, but and also for clarity purposes. So I think that's something else that we can work on after it close, after we've completed this grant cycle. [29:23] Jennifer Snow: Yeah, I think it's something we should be doing every few years anyway, right, double checking, making sure it's still accurate, making any improvements for simplicity or clarification. This is related, I had one person ask me it seems like this has to be emailed and [29:43] Speaker D (unidentified): and mailed physically, is that right? I think it can just be emailed. I thought so too because [29:51] Jennifer Snow: we but then I read through it and it says they should, it needs to be postmarked and it [29:56] Nina Earley: needs to be addressed too. So it does specifically say you have to do both. Yeah, all [30:02] Speaker D (unidentified): right, okay. Yeah, your application to us has to be mailed. Yeah, and it goes to the city so Sarah [30:11] Jennifer Snow: as the recipient in Anne's office and then she sends it to us and then we all take over. So right, there's some things we can simplify and we'll do that after this cycle, but yeah, if you can draft, if you want to run it just share it with everybody before you send it out. I can send you the link to the list of emails, but yeah, just a reminder of like hey it's open, we want you to know and send it to the individual artist. Nina makes things. Everybody's emails actually are always in our packet email. Sarah sends the packet email. I'm just [30:57] Speaker D (unidentified): gonna email that email. I don't like making to my email threads. All right. [31:05] Jennifer Snow: Last call for thoughts on purchasing items. Cool. Ongoing projects and plans for 2026. You don't have anything new here. This is all a bit budget dependent still. [31:24] Speaker F (unidentified): I'm happy to talk about budget. Great. Let's talk about budget. Okay, so the city has something called a tax increment financing district. Basically what it does is it, went in about 94, I mean yeah, I think it was like 94. Went in and so what happens is in 1994 it captured the value of the downtown at let's say 100 bucks and then over time as those values go beyond that, like let's say it goes up to a thousand dollars, the taxes on that nine hundred dollar difference goes into what's called a tip fund. And so that's a separate fund, it does not come in stone, it's the general fund that we have to run and every year as part of the budget process we go through a staff level, we make recommendations on how those two funds should be used in years past for decades tip under the state statute. It's because it's controlled by the department of economic and community development at the state. Under state statute it would have to be for improvements to the to the district. Like we use it for, we've been saving up capital funds to fix some of the walls that are downtown. We use it to do, you know, downtown lighting changes. Some of the funds go to the downtown partnership for the work and events that they do. So it all has to go into the downtown. Last year the statute changed where you can use funds to do arts and culture because before that you could not do that. You could give it to a downtown organization like the partnership but you could not do it directly for arts and culture, so that changed. And so we went through the process with TBCD to change it at our level because the, if you have a TIF, you still, even though the statute changes, we still have to change it at the local level. It took many months, but we did it last year. So when I did the TIF budget this year that's going to the city manager, I put in, just from the conversations that you've had in the past, I put in thirty thousand dollars for a cultural asset and strategy plan. So that would go for a consultant to work with the cultural asset committee and obviously the full commission to prepare, well, sort of what do we have, sort of a typical planning document where, you know, this is what we have, these are all of our assets, and then take it the next step, what do we want to do over the next decade, like what are our themes, is it individual artists, like those kinds of questions and conversations come out of that. And so that is in there. The, I also put in $20,000 for the commission to use for either upping your grant, or we've talked for many years about doing a calendar. So to go towards that. And then I also put in $10,000 for a public art piece. That would be something that you would recommend, either it's a standalone public art piece or it's something, you know, to go into the park, you know, to do, because that's a concern that commissioners have had for a while about making sure we pay artists a stipend, you know, that it's not free, that we do stipend. So it could be for that, but it's definitely for, you know, something that's in the public realm, a public art piece. So that's separate from the grant, in other words. So yeah, so that went in, it's Being reviewed right now at the manager's office. What happens in the budget process is she reviews all of the department budgets, and then she creates what's called the manager's budget, and that goes to city council. City council has their hearings usually in April into May, and then they take their final vote in June, and then the new fiscal year starts in July. [36:15] Jennifer Snow: With this change, would all of our budget come out of the [36:21] Speaker F (unidentified): tiff no is that i still want to catch your budget just saying yeah okay yeah so and that 20 i kind of gave it sort of the general yeah commission because if you want to add more money to october or you want to add more money like i say to the grant program you could or if you want to do a calendar that it's not the full amount of what you thought a calendar might cost but it kind of gets you started a little bit any [36:52] Speaker D (unidentified): questions. We'll see. It's amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I think a cultural asset plan is really going to be a big help. I do too, I do too. And when the, when they came for the main street thing that we went to, that they, that was something they asked about, you know, what kind of public art did we have here in May. They were interested in seeing what we had. And it's like, that would be, it's gonna be good to be able to say, this is what we have. You can go here, you can go there. [37:20] Speaker F (unidentified): And a lot of cities do them. I know I looked at the one that Burlington, Vermont did. That was very good. Philadelphia, I mean, a lot of cities will separate out sort of arts and culture in their planning class and say, what do we have? What do we wanna do? [37:36] Jennifer Snow: What's our goals? Yeah, and I think this increased budget for that project would allow us to also then right set us up for success for the future in how to more easily update that actual cultural asset [37:50] Speaker D (unidentified): map or database or whatever it ends up being. And when you pursue grants, you know, [37:57] Speaker F (unidentified): outside of the city, like at a state or federal level, it's always good to have a strategy document because it shows that you know we went through a process this is part of what we want to do yeah [38:11] Jennifer Snow: Cool, fingers crossed. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, that's great news. Kind of drilled in on one piece that just sounds, you know, worth taking a minute on, so like the calendar, right, that you've always wanted to be able to provide to, you know, people that want to be in Bangor. Do is there any flexibility to partner with other organizations? The reason I ask is I know the chamber is grappling with the same thing at the same time. I know, you know, downtown partnership tries to do that, right, and so it seems like Ultimately, if you need a calendar, or an online, you know, calendar, or a print calendar, it's good to bring everybody's efforts together, I guess is what I'm saying, but I don't know if we're siloed in a way that doesn't work well now. When we started that project or when I joined that project, the idea had come from a few residents of Bangor who They voiced thoughts that they kept missing out on events because they saw the write-up in the Bangor Daily News after the event, and they didn't know what was happening. And they are not as online as some audiences are, and so they were missing a print version of a calendar, something that tells us what's happening in town. And the BDN used to on their own have an upcoming events calendar, and it's not, they don't do it anymore, and so that was sort of the impetus for the project. We did in the initial planning meet with both the downtown maker partnership and also Justin Russell who runs Bangor 7th, he put together his own digital events calendar. Partnership has a calendar that is also online that is, it has to be specific to the downtown district, they can't post things that are outside their district because of rules of how they function, and so those two calendars together exist, but both are only online. Sevens is free, you can, if you don't yet, you should subscribe to it because you get an email, you can sign up for the things you're interested in, you get a weekly email, here's what's happening in town this week, but that doesn't cover the people who are not online still, and so we had in our planning, we talked to both of them, we kind of got together, had a few meetings, and then our plan was to actually take out a Quarter page ad in the BDN weekly and pull event information from Sevens and the Downtown Miracle Partnership and print that in the paper. And that was kind of our work around because the paper's not willing to just do a calendar anymore. It's not worth it for them time-wise, budget-wise. And so this was kind of our way to both leverage what already exists and the work that's being done, so we're not actually manually pulling together all these events that are happening. It's a ton of work. And so and then kind of yeah, streamline the process. But that requires budget to buy the ad. The BDN did at that time, but this was now multiple years ago, give us a massive discount. If we can spend, I think the limit was $25,000 for the year, they'll give us 70% off of their ad price. And so we would have been able to do a weekly quarter page ad in the Thursday paper for a whole year, plus a few other ads, and an announcement, and then a postcard that we were going to send to all residents. Part of the issue there still is that it only reaches BDN subscribers. But one sort of nice part about that is those residents who may live in assisted living or are older residents who are not online, the main audience we were trying to reach, they have access to the paper in other ways potentially, right? Like if you live in assisted living, your dining hall has the paper. You don't have to be a personal subscriber to the paper, so it doesn't add cost. And so there's kind of different access points for people. We still have not gotten the funding for it and we have asked every year for the past few years. We have started bigger, we kind of cut it down, we got it as streamlined as possible, but it still takes money to buy those ads and it still takes some time for someone to design the initial and to kind of do the communication to pull stuff. But if anybody has other ideas for how we can build a printed calendar that can reach as many people as possible or those who are interested. [42:51] Speaker D (unidentified): A lot of bigger cities have your, you know, like entertainment, like newspaper. It's not even like a newspaper, just like a, you know what I'm talking about, but like in Albany, New York, they have Medjlan and it's got all the local clubs and what's going on and this and that. And you could get it at the little newspaper boxes, like our art boxes, and bigger cities, San Francisco, same thing. So my seven there, if we could find somebody who wanted to start a little printing press and get a grant, we should give them a grant. They can print up one of these little newsletters and that would cover it all, like, anyways, that's just my thought. But on the other hand, like, I don't know, that's just what I was, just immediately came to me as that entertainment little thing, because I Every time I saw it, I'd grab one because I wanted to see what was going on, you know. You walk right downtown, you see the box, you want one out, yeah. [43:39] Jennifer Snow: Like a city paper, yeah. We had one for a while too, Metro, right? And Metro still exists, it's just not, it's a different format and it's not as crazy, it's It's like a, maybe a magazine that comes with the paper every once in a while. [43:59] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah. I think so. That's like the flyer. [44:03] Speaker G (unidentified): Elfest does, they do a lot. Yeah. [44:06] Jennifer Snow: Waterville does the great. They do. Yeah, they have the book. Yeah. Good. But also, that is a full-time staff person. That's a full-time job, putting that together, and then they're printed, and they're fresh, [Speaker B (unidentified): They're really good.] They have funding that's significantly higher, than kind of what we've been having, grades, yeah, they do, for now, right, yeah. I mean, that is one we had looked at as part of the planning for this, because they do such a good job of putting together. We knew we wouldn't have funding for like a full-time person to do this, and so we were looking at alternatives, but yeah, if anybody has ideas, maybe we'll get some Tiffany money. You can figure out a way to do something like this for 20 grand. Maybe that'll be possible next year. [44:58] Speaker B (unidentified): That's our budget, 20 grand. [45:01] Speaker D (unidentified): What's that? That's the budget? [45:02] Speaker F (unidentified): That's what I put in. Yeah,. [45:07] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah, get the money and they can just say, stay put until we come up with a plan, or do we need a plan? [45:18] Speaker F (unidentified): To be approved, it will be available July one. [45:22] Speaker D (unidentified): So we need a decision by then. No, just, no, this is just available, yeah, we would get it, would [45:29] Jennifer Snow: be part of our budget and then we get to use it next year and we get to decide what to do with it, exactly right. And I might have missed part of it, so you have 30,000 for a consultant, 10,000 public standard, 20,000 outside of, you know, just our general operating budget, and then there's, there's another 20,000 in there for a different project. [45:51] Speaker G (unidentified): Grants or calendars. Oh, okay. [45:54] Jennifer Snow: I didn't get that line out, awesome. Grants or calendars, yeah, okay. [46:00] Speaker B (unidentified): I see where we land. Yeah. [46:03] Nina Earley: Jennifer? Yeah, sorry. I received an email that the Maine Arts Commission has a creative communities grant that's open right now that I think would be worthwhile for us to look into to and potentially apply for as additional monies. It's a grant up to $7,000. The only thing is the application is due by the end of this month. So we would need to decide on how we wanted to use that. But if it was something, because it's a matching grant, we do have to have matching funds for it. But it's something that I think could work. One of the primary goal is to expand community access to the arts so I think [46:51] Jennifer Snow: we fit right in there yeah and when is the next this has to go to full Council [47:02] Speaker D (unidentified): not the economic yeah right you do you will need again just render do by now [47:15] Jennifer Snow: yeah so it'd be the 16th okay yeah that's tight but we could put together an application we could get started on it if they approve it we keep working on it they don't approve it then we have materials for the next application I don't think it's a waste of time to [47:37] Speaker D (unidentified): put something like this together and that's the other advantage of parking like 20 000 like this [47:44] Speaker F (unidentified): for cultural commission is that if you need you know yeah you know you need a match for a grant that you want to do you've got it so that's why I didn't get too specific on where that would go because I wanted to give you a little bit of like okay what we want to try to do with sure yeah and [48:06] Speaker D (unidentified): who writes the grant you don't have a great person anymore so be us working with you raise [48:13] Jennifer Snow: your hand yeah no that was all right which basically means we put as much of it together as possible and then we share it and then and submits it basically okay so we do fun -huh do we maybe have volunteers for a these could be grant committee members but Jen do you think maybe you'd want to get a meeting together to divvy up tasks and start putting this together absolutely oh will you email the whole Commission and whoever's interested in helping with this or who may have some experience in writing grants, please reply and join the meeting if possible. [49:03] Nina Earley: Yep, I'll include the link for that Creative Communities grant as well, just so everybody can see it, so that even if you don't have time right now to participate, but you have suggestions, we can definitely keep those included as well. [49:18] Speaker D (unidentified): Oh, I have a question very quickly. Yep. Before we wrap up, I was wondering if you guys can share the artist people from the committee, they can share what they are skilled at, like what is your art industry slash how do I explain this. Yeah, what's our area of expertise, areas of expertise. Beautifully said. [49:52] Jennifer Snow: Yeah, did you want us to go around in a circle? I don't know, it's just I don't know who. [49:56] Speaker D (unidentified): I think I remember he's a musician because I love music. So I remember that. DJ. [50:03] Mariya Doncheva: I wrote a grant last year too, and I got it. So I have some experience with some of these things to be useful. I'm certainly willing to be part of it. And I don't know, I don't know exactly how to go forward with this type of grant, but because they're all different, but like some way they're all the same. So I can be at least a sounding board to talk to about this. [50:27] Speaker D (unidentified): Your area of expertise is making music or mixing music? [50:32] Mariya Doncheva: Mixing music mostly, yeah. [Jennifer Snow: And visual art.] Visual art as well, yeah. Visual art. Yeah, I'm a DJ and artist. [50:39] Speaker D (unidentified): And you said you create? [50:41] Jennifer Snow: I work at a design agency. I'm a project manager. So my capacity is limited, but I am great at proofreading. That's great. I think that's helpful sometimes. I'm happy to read everything before they get sent. I write proposals for a living pretty much, but I also manage projects. So I manage budgets, I manage timelines and all of that stuff. Or website redesigns mostly and web strategy projects with nonprofits. So I have a lot of general nonprofit operating experience too. But I am a visual artist. Not really a painter, more fabric and photochemicals. Okay. Oh, I also am vice president of the Graphic Design Association of Maine. [Speaker D (unidentified): Graphic design. Okay.] Lots of things. [51:41] Speaker D (unidentified): Do we have any like digital pools anywhere? Like relationships for digital art? [51:46] Jennifer Snow: What do you mean by that? [51:48] Speaker D (unidentified): Like if you know people within the industry. [51:51] Jennifer Snow: Oh yeah, I know lots of designers. [51:53] Speaker D (unidentified): They're digital designers. Awesome. Who else is an artist? [52:01] Speaker G (unidentified): I'm a teacher and an artist and I work primarily in the collage. I teach small groups of elderly people at this point. [52:20] Speaker D (unidentified): Would you please tell more about the collage? [52:24] Speaker G (unidentified): You can see a lot of collages on Saturday at the library. I was going to say I've seen her. [52:30] Speaker D (unidentified): Work showcased up all over before, it's very cool. You're all busy people but. [52:37] Speaker G (unidentified): Friends and I started a thing jumping off something we saw called Collage a Day February. So it's a way to make the winter go. So there was an open invitation for people to come to a workshop shop about a month ago, and this Saturday people bring their art to the library and see everybody's work and talk. [53:04] Speaker F (unidentified): Nice. What time? 2 to 3 p.m. Yeah, anybody can come. [53:13] Speaker D (unidentified): What is the collage made out of because I'm not very, I'm not very educated in the art industry. [53:20] Speaker G (unidentified): My collages are on mostly paper, some hand decorated paper, some things cut out of old books. Okay. I tend to do just a variety of different techniques, but very often the project starts with a print as the underlayment. And my prints are kind of abstract gelatin prints or calligraphs if anybody knows what those are. [53:55] Speaker D (unidentified): So it's very creative like you take a few things and then you make one thing out of those few things that's close. Okay, that's wonderful, thank you for sharing. Yeah, you said you were a musician, was it, yeah, I was classically trained and flew, I went to college for, I actually studied music [Speaker B (unidentified): engineering, recording music.] I've been doing more hands-on art to keep myself busy and do something. I don't know. I can do all kinds of things. I'm not a master of any though, I don't think in my own mind, but no I've played the flute for a long, time. I can play a little guitar, a little piano. I sing in my car all the time if you see me driving around, yes that's me. Okay, so you're a football musician, I mean if you went to school for it, anyone else art Rosemary, I'm sorry I don't remember what you [54:58] Speaker B (unidentified): mentioned that you do. Oh I used to dance ballet. All right, that's not, I still do. You still, damn, I still, I love dancing. Yeah, okay, so I grew up doing it and then took a break and now I'm [55:12] Speaker D (unidentified): back doing it belay. Yeah, beautiful. So you have knowledge in like theater and [55:18] Speaker B (unidentified): like choreography, all that stuff. No, a little bit, I mean I'm, I just basically did the [55:26] Speaker D (unidentified): the dancing part, not the production side of things. So would you say you're a great executor, execution now, dance, yes, yeah, okay, great. And Jen, Jennifer, Jen, it is 9 30. 30. Yeah, well thank you everyone for sharing, I'm just trying to get to know you better unless you didn't ask, I see, and you want to do them join but that's not part of the arts. [55:58] Jennifer Snow: Maybe next time if I was, yeah, great, then I adjourn the meeting. Okay, thank you. What are the basics of the budget schedule like, when do they approve a budget, do you say July? [56:14] Speaker F (unidentified): Well no, it starts in July, I mean the budget year starts in July.