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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

BEAD and BPP offer grant for Bloomington artists to go green

Bloomington Playwrights Project and Bloomington Entertainment & Arts District are trying to establish Bloomington as a green community. They have teamed up with local non-profits to begin an annual AwareFest and to offer grants to community artists, who will exhibit their crafts during the month of October.

The idea of AwareFest was conceived as a collaborative project that will incorporate the community into the arts scene and promote awareness of important issues, such as this year’s topic — sustainability.

“BEAD is a department that is very concerned with ideas like sustainability,” said Miah Michealson, assistant economic development director for the arts for the City of Bloomington. “From a pragmatic standpoint, the idea of building an arts funding partnership is great not only for downtown, but for the community. It has a much larger feel to it.”

AwareFest will take place during the first three weeks of October. From theme days to a festival of 10-minute plays, the events will provide a large amount of options for members of the Bloomington community to interact with various forms of art.
BPP also offered grants to artists and non-profit organizations who wished to share their art with the Bloomington community. With the financial support of BEAD, $2,000 in grants will be given to artists. BPP is currently sorting through the applications.

Chad Rabinobitz, BPP’s producing artist director, said hopefully within the week BPP will be able to choose the recipients of the AwareFest grants.

“We need to act quickly because we want to make sure artists have enough time for their projects,” he said.

BPP’s Managing Director Gabe Gloden said the grantees will be chosen based on their originality, ability to execute proposals, education value, connection to the theme, uniqueness to AwareFest, number of people the project can reach and cost
of project.

“Our main motivation is to show that art can have an impact on the community,” Rabinobitz said. “It’s a great thing for community because it allows us to collaborate with other Bloomington non-profits and businesses.”

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