National Endowment of the Arts grants 3 Indiana libraries money to promote literacy

The Indiana Arts Commission announced July 11 that the National Endowment for the Arts awarded grants to libraries from the Indiana cities of Corydon, New Castle and Frankfort for a literary program called The Big Read.\nBloomington hosts a similar program, One Book One Bloomington, which ended in May. Ed Vande Sande, interim executive director of the Bloomington Area Arts Council, said the program has been running for the last eight years but that this year was the first time they partnered with The Big Read program. \nVande Sande explained the program ran independently with the help of a few corporations. He said the grant was approximately $10,000 and covered nearly 80 percent of the program.\n“When this grant became available, we jumped all over it,” Vande Sande said.\nVande Sande explained that the program ran independently with the help of a few corporations. With the NEA grant, they were able to have 18 different activities ranging from book readings in Monroe County Jail to a Tibetan fire purification ceremony. Bloomington had more activities to date than any municipality that participated in The Big Read, he said. \n“(We’ve) never been able to reach out because we didn’t have the funding to do it,” Vande Sande said. “It was really great. (The Big Read) brought in demographics and people that weren’t used to interacting with the arts council.”\nThe selected book for the program this year was Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”\nPaulette Beete, public affairs specialist for the NEA, said The Big Read began in 2006 when the NEA launched a pilot phase of the program. In 2007 they began their first year as a national program. The Big Read has two cycles in the program, running from January to June and September to December.\nBeete said the program developed out of a response to the NEA report “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America.” The report listed 10 key points that identified a decline in literary reading among American adults.\n“We’re hoping we will be able to make reading a center of American public life,” Beete said.\nAccording to the report written by Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA, the accelerating declines in literary reading among all demographic groups of American adults indicate an “imminent cultural crisis.” The report says “at the current rate of loss, literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century.”\nGioia was unable to be reached for an interview before press time.\n“It is time to inspire a nationwide renaissance of literary reading and bring the transformative power of literature into the lives of all citizens,” according to the report. \nBeete explained the NEA wants the public to discuss novels with the same kind of enthusiasm as they would for “American Idol” or “America’s Top Model.” \n“The reason this is important (is) reading is the skill you constantly have to work at,” Beete said.\nShe said the program awarded both cycles with more than \n$2 milllion between approximately 200 communities around the nation. Beete said the program is highly competitive and that the NEA will be announcing the communities for cycle one for 2008 in November.\nVande Sande said Bloom-\nington will definitely be participating in the program in 2008 but would not know until after the fall what book the community would be reading. He said the program was phenomenal and feels it was a great chance for the community to come together.\n“It really helped highlight in a lot of different areas the joy and importance of reading,” he said.