Essential Arts Alert

Dear ECRAC community members,

We want all in our arts community to know that even while the office and gallery are closed ECRAC staff members are available to respond to your questions, as usual, by phone and email. We know that the COVID-19 Pandemic and National Emergency is having an impact on your activities and your livelihood. This situation is new and alarming for all of us. We want to be as helpful to you as possible.

With that in mind:

• If you have a current grant and you need to reschedule or modify approved grant funded activities, please contact us to discuss your options for a grant contract revision and extension. We are being as flexible as possible!
• If you, or your organization, planned to apply for for an April 1, 2020 grant the deadlines are extended to May 1. Applications are open. You can be thinking about about a grant to pay for your time (artists) or a grant to help stabilize your arts organization.
• If you have submitted a grant and it hasn't yet been reviewed the review process is delayed by about 2 weeks from what was planned. Grant applications that were going to be reviewed on March 17 were postponed to an online meeting. All applicants have been invited to listen in. Let us know if you didn't see your official email notification about this review.

We are considering lots of things:

• having informal Zoom mixers so we can keep connected. Keep an eye on Arts Alerts for the invites.
• paying for Zoom accounts for arts groups and artist groups that want to keep in touch with each other but don't want to worry about the Basic 40 minute limit. (Zoom has a great reputation with the not-so-great rural internet.)
• having the IMAGE Art Show online, possibly.

If you have thoughts on any of these, or have ideas that will help, please let me know as soon as you can!

Most importantly, please do everything you can to stay healthy, and to help others stay healthy. Also, please keep the lines of communication open with us as our partners. Let us know what your questions and concerns are, and we will do what we can to address them.

Sincerely,

Mary Minnick-Daniels, Executive Director

Direct Phone: 320-591-7033

Email: director@ecrac.org