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There’s potentially lots of grant dollars available for the arts and art projects in Kosciusko County - possibly even millions.
Tuesday afternoon at the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, community leaders from the county, city of Warsaw, local businesses and nonprofits heard from Michael Galbraith, administrator, Northeast Indiana Regional Development Authority, and Jacob Ihrie, senior director of regional initiatives Northeast Indiana, and executive director of the Regional Development Authority, about the regional economic plan and the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) 2.0 grant process.
“One of the programs that we’re working for is a grant from the state that was called READI and READI 2. So, READI 2 is part of that Lilly Endowment donated to the state $250 million, and then the state IEDC (Indiana Economic Development Corporation) sort of split that up into two different pots. One was for blight and one was for the arts. So we’re here sort of to talk to you about the arts portion of that, and the state has set aside $65 million of that for arts-type projects,” Galbraith explained.
The Indiana Arts Commission is administering the $65 million.
“One of the things that we’re looking at is that when we initially got that word, the state didn’t really quite know exactly what they were looking for in terms of grant projects, so they gave sort of a mandate to each of the 15 regions to develop a creative economy study, sort of a plan for the region focused on the arts. So that’s kind of what we’re here to do today, is sort of present for Northeast Indiana what we looked at in terms of the arts, and what we really wanted to do .... is treat the arts absolutely the same as every other industry out there, both the good and the bad parts of it. It’s an incredibly important part of our economy and it deserves to be treated just like advanced manufacturing,” he continued.
Ihrie pointed out the Northeast Creative Economy Study can be found online at Indianareadi.com
“So to Mike’s point, we focused more on building off of our really awesome artistic background in this region. One of the things that the state pointed out to us was that Northeast Indiana punches below its weight class, we hear that a lot. They did not expect us to do what Southern Indiana did; what some of our kind of friends in between the Northwest and Indianapolis (did). We’ve got a lot of capacity here, so we want to be additive to that, while not disregarding the foundation that we already have,” Ihrie said.
He reiterated that a huge part of the plan was to push the creative economy sector in every aspect to the front with advanced manufacturing, biomedical technology and agriculture “and how it integrates in and how it can be added to.”
A presentation by Ihrie showed the five creative industry segments include culture and heritage, design, film and media, performing arts and visual arts and handcrafted products. The segments were divided up strictly by the economic perspective.
“And (we) put those all together to really analyze what that footprint looks like in our 11-county region,” he said.
Looking at all the studies that have been done that they could, and then synthesizing it back to a standard data set, Ihrie said, “This was the breakdown from that 2016 kind of benchmark set. This is strictly creative economy jobs. Just the ones in those five segments, no overlap. That is not a graphic designer at Zimmer Biomet.”
According to the data snapshot, 3,753 creative occupation jobs were within creative industries; 5,737 creative occupation jobs existed outside creative industries; 9,344 additional jobs were in creative industries but in non-creative roles, such as administrative or finance staff in arts organizations; and 534 creative business establishments (combined, including nonprofits) operated in the region.
Ihrie’s presentation listed distinctive regional strengths as youth education, strong cultural institutions and creative business, philanthropy, culture and heritage, artisan products, festivals, public art and design.
Weaknesses include limited implementation capacity, fragmented regional collaboration, declining federal and state resources, underappreciation of arts and culture, challenges in attracting and retaining creative talent, potential overbuilding of performing arts venues, potential underbuilding in audience development, insufficient funding for sustainability and operations, limited formal and informal networks and creative ecosystem centered in Fort Wayne.
“Sixty-five million dollars in arts and culture, that is the largest grant that the Indiana Arts Commission has ever administered. It will come back. Mike and I are pretty confident that this is LEI’s kind of first dip into arts and culture, it won’t be the last,” Ihrie said. “Anecdotally, 50% of the Lilly Foundation’s money is tied to Eli Lilly’s stock, so as the stock goes up, it’s at $1,000 a share right now, they have to give away a percentage change of that based upon the 50%.”
Ihrie said, “We have a creative economy. We are not creating a creative economy. We are treating it with reverence.”
He went over the strategic framework, which includes strengthening the music and film/media industries, developing a robust creative talent pipeline, increasing public awareness and appreciation of the creative economy, investing in long-term creative infrastructure and grow regional cultural tourism.
On the growing regional cultural tourism piece, Ihrie said, “Because that’s that pipeline piece. How do we get more people to come from outside of our region to inside of our region so we’re not cross-competing.”
The Indiana Arts Council Grant Portal can be found at www.grantinterface.com
The grant portal will require applicants to set up an account. He said it’s not an intimidating grant portal, but there’s a lot to it.
The portal opened Monday. The application deadline is 5 p.m. April 15, with the Regional Review completed by May 5. The IEDC Jury Review is May 15, and awardee notification is tentatively July 1. The grant period is July 1, 2026, to Dec. 31, 2028, when all the grant funds have to be expended.
Ihrie encouraged applicants to reach out to him and Galbraith as there’s not a lot of time between now and the deadline.
Eligible entities include nonprofit organizations, local or regional government entities and a consortia of multiple partners. Ihrie said it sounded like the consortia of multiple partners was something that “they really want to happen.”
Ihrie went over the eight application sections with more details, highlighting areas where the application may be different than other grant applications people are familiar with.
“Clarity, feasibility, alignment, impact community engagement and then financial sustainability is going to be a big piece. Lilly does not seem interested in doing one-offs. They want things that are going to be able to continue and be like a transformative piece in the communities,” he said.
On project impact, Ihrie encouraged applicants to not sell themselves short.
Tuesday’s 40-minute session included a question-and-answer session.
Ihrie said Indiana Arts Commission was really excited about this, while Galbraith estimated there will probably be 600 applications for the funds but encouraged organizations to apply.
Galbraith’s email is rda@neindiana.com and Ihrie’s email is jacob@neindiana.com
