NEWARK ARTS COUNCIL
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Mission Statement
• Organization Name Newark Arts Council • Name of Executive Director Felicia Swoope • Street Address, City, State, Zip Code 17 Academy Street Suite 702, Newark, NJ 07102 • Telephone Number/ extension: 973-643-1625 • Fax Number: 973-643-1352 • E-mail Address/Web Address: Felicia.Swoope@Newarkarts.org/https://newarkarts.org Mission Through programs, advocacy, promotion, education, and coordination, the Newark Arts Council brings the transformative power of the arts into the lives of those who live in, work in, and visit Newark to further impact economic and community development. Services Offered 1. Information Services, Newsletter (NewarkArts.org), Website, and Quarterly Cultural Calendar 2. ArtStart Grants Program 3. Open Doors Artists Studios & Available Space Tour 4. Newark Arts Education Roundtable 5. Technical Assistance to Artists (Re-Source Professional Development Program) 6. Economic Impact
About This Cause
Newark Arts’ mission is to power the arts to transform the lives of those who live in, work in, and visit the city of Newark. Newark Arts is the primary advocate and intermediary for the City’s arts and cultural sector, comprising more than 5,000 nonprofit cultural workers and 90 arts education partners. We provide financial support to artists and small-budget, diverse arts organizations who have helped make Newark the nation’s seventh most arts-vibrant city. We promote the city’s diverse arts scene by producing Newark Arts Festival every October. The Festival includes 500 artistic participants, reflective of Newark’s outstanding African America, Latino, Portuguese, and LGBTQ creative communities. COVID ground Newark’s arts and culture economy to a halt. Newark Arts’ public-private partnerships, connections to anchor institutions, and funding are now critically important for not only the sustainability of Newark’s creative community but for the overall vibrancy of Newark. Teaching artists, performers, musicians, poets, small arts organizations and galleries’ livelihoods and health have been severely impacted by cancelled events, commissions, contracts, and grants. Smaller art institutions, independent artists and creatives are hard pressed to sustain themselves through closings and postponements. Newark Arts' value proposition is pivotal as a conduit, convener (virtually and in-person) and communicator of resources to support the sector. Toward that end, during the pandemic Newark Arts retooled our efforts to serve Newark’s struggling arts ecosystem. Some examples include: • We launched “Newark Arts At Home” for COVID-Impacted artists and creatives to advertise their online events and services, and even solicit donations. We have some 500 artists in our database. Check out the Newark-centric webpage at www.newarkarts.org/athome. • We have been the fiscal agent for the City of Newark's $800,000 Creative Catalyst Fund for the past two years. Already, Newark Arts has distributed $1.6 million from the fund to Newark artists and small arts organizations. These cash awards provide much-needed resources to small arts organizations and artists that often lack access to major grants. We are working on the adjudicatory team and also encouraging private matching donations at www.newarkarts.org/creatie-catalyst-fund. • For for more than 20 years, Newark Arts has distributed ArtStart/PARTNERS grants for neighborhood and start-up arts organizations who aren’t eligible for the Creative Catalyst Fund. During COVID and since, we've distributed $150,000. Awards are announced every June and featured at www.newarkarts.org/artstart • In 2020 we recast the Newark Arts Festival, on digital platform, with the theme of Art+Tech at www.newarkartsfestival.com. We built a virtual gallery modeled after the Newark Museum of Art and featured 20 local artists, many of whom greatly leveraged their careers. In 2021, we featured 158 works of art in an 18,000-SF empty retail space within the Hahne's & Co. Building and curated Dionne Warwick: Queen of Twitter, in which local artists created interpretive pieces based on Ms. Warwick's tweets. We attracted thousands without incident, fortunately, just prior to the Omicron surge. At its height, the festival has attracted 15,000 and was dubbed New Jersey's Favorite Visual Arts Festival for 2018 and 2019 by the People's Choice Awards. • We are the fiscal agent for Arts Ed Newark, an alliance of 90+ arts education stakeholders who collectively advocate for high-quality arts in all four disciplines to be taught to every Newark child from K-12. Arts Ed Newark demonstrates the connection between the arts and positive vision for Newark. It provides capacity-building and resources for all of its members. By leveraging combined experience, expertise and resources, it has developed leading-edge programs. Arts Ed Newark’s Trauma-Informed Care and the Arts training series includes three parts: “Trauma 101”, “Digging Deep through the Arts” and “Building Resilience Through the Arts”, providing those working in youth-led spaces arts education tools and strategies that specifically support trauma-impacted students and safer spaces, launched in January 2020. As the fiscal agent for VH1 Save The Music Foundation implementing its award-winning national initiatives to restore music education in Newark’s public schools. Arts Ed Newark has developed evaluation tools used by more than 20 participating organizations, including Save the Music Foundation and Alvin Ailey, who use the tool nationally. Every year, Newark Arts quantifies and qualifies the impact of Newark’s arts and culture sector by completing Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Data Arts Survey. We supply additional data every year that informs the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University’s annual Arts Vibrancy Index Report, which ranks more than 900 communities across the nation, examining the level of supply, demand, and government support for the arts. As a result, in 2019, Newark was ranked as the nation’s seventh most arts-vibrant community by SMU’s National Center for Arts Research. Newark Arts was pivotal in helping the city and Greater Newark region rise from 9th to 7th position in SMU’s fifth annual Arts Vibrancy Index Report. Americans for the Arts completed research with Newark Arts that revealed: • 5,000 jobs are created in Newark by the nonprofit arts industry—not including for-profit ventures • $178M is generated annually through the nonprofit arts industry • $7.2M in taxes are generate locally, and $8.3M to the state The arts are vitally important to the resurgence of the City of Newark and its economy.