2015-266-E Arts - Hillsborough Arts Council Arts Grant

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DocuSign Envelope ID:6FBOD2B6-B8D3-4136-A376-20FDC2DO4FC7 5 Arts Program Application Narrative • Organizational Profile — a brief overview your organization's mission and history. The Hillsborough Arts Council is a 501[c]3 non-profit organization whose primary role is to organize and promote cultural and educational events featuring local and statewide artists for the enjoyment and education of the general public. Our mission is, "Enriching our community through the arts." Programs are funded through partnerships and donations, and by grants from such entities as the Hillsborough Tourism Board,OCAC,and NC Arts Council.This support allows us to offer some programs for a small fee,and other events free of charge. The HAC Board is a diverse group of artists and art lovers,and the membership includes potters, jewelry makers,poets,sculptors,photographers,mixed media painters, designers and art enthusiasts from Hillsborough and the surrounding area. Quarterly council meetings are open to the public.Board members and local volunteers serve on various committees for HAC events and activities. The HAC has one employee,a part-time bookkeeper. Free Spirit Freedom is a cultural arts initiative under the Hillsborough Arts Council umbrella. The program emerged in summer 2010 when co-founders Renee Price and Thomas Watson with a select group of area residents deliberated and concurred that Orange County needed to preserve,acknowledge and celebrate its diverse heritage.We recognize the photographer as an artist capturing moments and moods in time,and community elders as resources for documenting the sentiments that were manifest during specific chapters of our regional history, and so,we use photography along with narrative as our media to: link the past to our future, show our unique identities,and acknowledge a broader spectrum of values. Our inaugural exhibition took place January to March of 2011, at the HAC gallery,at which we hosted a well-attended opening and participated in the February Art Walk. Since then,we: • Exhibited"Rural Schools for Colored Children-Path to Freedom,"and held a Storytelling Event related to this photography exhibit,January 2015 • Exhibited"The Black Church,Civil rights and Freedom,"and held a Storytelling Event related to this photography exhibit,January/February 2015 • January 2013 and January 2014, exhibited at the Orange County Annual Human Relations Day Forum,hosted by the OC Human Relations Commission • engaged community members in a video,"What Freeodm Means to Me" • exhibited at the Central Orange High School Alumni reunion • had two month-long exhibitions at the Central Orange Senior Center • hosted"An Outdoor Cultural Affair" at Moorefields,featuring storyteller,Joyce Grear • set up at the 2011 Hillsborough's Last Friday events Free Spirit Freedom's mission is to use the arts to promote our common history,establish social bonds, celebrate our cultural traditions and create bridges of cross-cultural understanding among diverse populations of all generations. We want to relate the struggles and triumphs in the determined effort to achieve civil and human rights particularly for people of color,yet for all Americans. Eventually,we intend to build Free Spirit Freedom into a vibrant community resource,collecting old photographs,historic images, oral histories and narratives, for an on- going public exhibition and continued interactive programming that will instill a sense of being and place while promoting diversity and inclusiveness in local affairs.