County receives $30,000 grant for Small Town Big Art program
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The Maui News
The National Endowment for the Arts announced that Maui County has been approved for a $30,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support its Small Town Big Art program in Wailuku town and to make plans for countywide expansion.
Over the next two years, the grant will fund efforts to sustain and develop place-based, culturally rooted public art collaborations in Wailuku; design and implement public art activities in up to three new Maui County neighborhoods; and deliver a public art master plan for the county, according to a news release.
The county's grant was awarded in partnership with Hale Ho'ike'ike at the Bailey House Museum/Maui Historical Society and Maui Public Art Corps.
"It's an honor to be selected as an NEA grant recipient thanks to the visionary artists who joined Small Town Big Art over the past couple of years," Mayor Michael Victorino said. "Art is a universal language that goes beyond words and it's the community consultants who share their history, stories, scientific and spiritual knowledge of Wailuku and Na Wai Eha who help the artists express our true authentic community."
Small Town Big Art launched in 2018 through an Our Town grant by the National Endowment for the Arts and has worked to install public art pieces throughout Wailuku as part of the town's economic revitalization plan. Each work of art is inspired by a carefully selected proverb from Mary Kawena Pukui's " 'Olelo No'eau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings."
To date, the program has successfully implemented public art projects with more than 200 community partners that have directly engaged 17,808 Wailuku participants.
The Small Town Big Art program is among 1,248 awards across America totaling $28.8 million that were selected to receive the first round of fiscal year 2022 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects category, according to the county's news release. It is one of 13 Hawaii-based grant recipients and one of three across Maui County.
For more information on the program, visit smalltownbig.org.