Cultcha Culcha, culcha.

Massachusetts is great for the arts. The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) was established in 1979 to provide access to cultural activities for all segments of the Commonwealth's population. The Local Cultural Council (LCC) Program, the second largest grant program of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, is a grassroots complement to the agency's centralized grant programs. Allocations are made to all of Massachusetts' 351 cities and towns to support community cultural activities. The LCC Program is the most extensive system of its kind in the nation to support arts, sciences and humanities.

It’s a unique program. No other state in the country has as many local councils as Massachusetts. Over 2,500 volunteers serve on the 329 local cultural councils that reach every city and town in the state.

I recently (okay, not so recently-more like in the last quarter of last year…but I haven’t blogged in a while, sosueme) joined the Conway Cultural Council (CCC), as one of three newbies. We had to take an online test in which we learned about LCCs and their responsibilities, and then participate in a session where we reviewed grants.

Grant funds are assigned to each local cultural council each year, divvied up by the MCC (Massachusetts Cultural Council). These are then in tern divided amongst appropriate grant applications that demonstrate a local public benefit, are not part of any town budget, and are (in the case of programs that request funds for sequential years) moving toward self-sustaining status. The program is essentially a boost for a one time cultural event, or a (short-term) helping hand for a new self-sustaining public-benefiting program. All in all, it’s a very good thing.

We met on cold wintry morning, to find the town hall closed. After waiting about twenty minutes, we finally located the keys, but found the inside not much warmer than the outside. What was warm was the reception from the other members, and their willingness to walk the newbies through the process. Also as warm was the discussion of the grant proposals that we had received several weeks earlier to review and comment on at the meeting. As a result of having reviewed these in advance, we went through the list pretty quickly.

The problem with a finite pot, however, is that you have to make hard choices at the end. If we had double the allocated budget, we could have let fly all the applications we wanted. Not having the budget though, we had to re-evaluate of the basis of greatest impact and public benefit. These hard choices were eased just a bit by problems with some of the applications, which (unfortunately) caused some programs that would otherwise have been strong contenders, to be eliminated. Yes, as they taught you in school, reading the instruction and crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s does count.