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An Endowment Windfall for Fledgling L.A. Artists

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Times Staff Writer

Some of Los Angeles’ struggling artists and fledgling arts groups may now get a small cut of the city’s new multimillion-dollar arts endowment.

Under the new guidelines adopted by the City Council this week, up to $800,000 from the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts may become available to individuals and less established arts organizations that, for the most part, have not been able to raise substantial amounts of money on their own. Artists and city officials hope the new program will support new artistic activity in the city.

“We will be the first city in California to fund individual artists,” said Al Nodal, general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department, which oversees the endowment. “We’re the only city in America that’s really moving forward on this.”

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The new guidelines, adopted by the City Council on Tuesday, will be used to give out grants for projects scheduled to begin after Jan. 1 and to be completed before June 30. Individual artists and designers can apply for $1,000 to $15,000, and newer arts groups can apply for a one-time-only grant of $1,500 to $2,500. Neither will be required to match the funds given them by the city. According to Nodal, the grants will be available to artists who live throughout Los Angeles County as long as their actual art work is done in the city.

Nodal called the program the city’s “first real attempt at being very attentive to what we’ve heard (from local artists and others who have met to discuss their needs).”

Although artists and arts groups are generally supportive of the council’s new program, some have expressed concerns that the new money may not go where it is most needed.

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“The endowment is supposedly meant to take care of the under-represented and under-recognized (artists in Los Angeles),” said Leo Guerra, co-director of the Los Angeles Arts Congress, a group comprised of about 300 members of the local arts community. “But there’s no fund-raising priority set for these under-represented groups, and there are no guarantees in (the new guidelines) that those groups that have been getting the funding all along won’t be the same ones to keep on getting it.”

Guerra, a poet, said he feared that those who have previously gone through the grant process would be the most qualified to receive additional grants, since they are already familiar with the applications and are among those who are assured of being notified of the new guidelines.

But overall, said Susan Franklin Tanner, a theater producer and co-director of the congress, “The city has done a pretty great job in coming up with a (funding) plan . . . and the priorities are in line with (the desires of) the L.A. Arts Congress.”

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The endowment, an arts funding package approved by the city council in November, 1988, is now operating on $5.8 million from the city’s general fund. Another $15 million or so is expected to be raised from fees on municipal and private developments.

Under the new guidelines, artists can use the grants to cover their own fees or production costs for creating publicly accessible artworks, or artworks for nonprofit institutions that can not pay them. The money can be spent on projects such as artists-in-residence programs, public performances, murals and design projects.

“We’re pleased with the part that provides funding for individual artists,” said Orlando Bonner, an actor and secretary-treasurer of the arts congress. “The bulk of the artists who are interested in the endowment are individual artists who have been on their own anyway, and (in the past) have had to join an organization to get funding. I think (the individual artist grants) will stimulate a lot of new artistic activity in the city.”

Members of the arts congress, which was organized to ensure that local artists had a voice in the endowment’s funding process, said they are also pleased with the new “entry-level” grants for fledgling groups (defined as groups that have been in existence for between one and three years), which can be used to help with “start-up” costs such as administrative projects.

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