Arts Council awards local groups $532,156

8/4/2007

A history of the Toledo Symphony is being produced as a 30-minute documentary, thanks in part to a $7,500 grant from by the Ohio Arts Council.

The 65-year retrospective, a collaboration between the symphony and WGTE-TV, is expected to be ready for broadcast in the spring, said Maribeth Stahl, symphony spokesman.

Also aiming for a spring broadcast is The House That Glass Built, an hour-long documentary of the local glass industry beginning with Edward Drummond Libbey s relocating his glass factory from Boston to Toledo and culminating with the Toledo Museum of Art s Glass Pavilion, which opened last August, said Greg Tye, senior television producer at WGTE.

The film s budget will surpass $100,000, said Tye, adding that the $10,000 OAC grant will be supplemented by other funds.

Twenty-two arts groups in Toledo will share $532,156 in tax dollars for operations, programs, and projects, in this round of awards for the 2008-09 biennium that began July 1.

It s a surprisingly good year for Ohio s arts groups, which will get 11.1 percent more money in this first round of grants, than in the same period of the previous biennium. The increase in the OAC s 2008-09 budget (nearly $25 million compared to $22.5 million for the previous biennium), is due to a 2.2 percent increase from Gov. Ted Strickland in the executive version of the budget and another $1 million each from the Ohio House and Senate. In this round, the OAC will disburse 469 grants totalling $8.7 million. Grantees are required to match the tax dollars with other funds.

The Toledo Museum of Art will get the lion s share of the local pot $201,374 and the Toledo Orchestra Association (the symphony) will get $116,274.

Other recipients are the Toledo Cultural Arts Center at the Valentine Theatre ($45,388); Arts Commission of Greater Toledo ($35,160); Toledo Opera ($26,206); Toledo Botanical Garden ($23,781); Arts Council of Lake Erie West ($19,245); Toledo Jazz Society ($16,766); Toledo Ballet ($15,829); Toledo Repertoire Theatre ($10,568); Public Broadcasting Foundation of Northwest Ohio ($10,000); Masterworks Chorale ($4,935), and Toledo-Lucas County Public Library ($1,830). Three Toledo schools, McKinley, Pickett, and Walbridge, will each receive $1,600 to hire artists who will do two-week residencies.

Two Sylvania groups are slated to get $16,813, the bulk of which ($14,194) goes to the Franciscan Theatre & Conference Center of Lourdes College. In Bowling Green, three groups will share $15,462. The Perrysburg Area Arts Council will get $4,290.

Other OAC awards include Akron ($211,110), Canton ($83,804), Cincinnati ($1.6 million), Cleveland ($2.35 million), Columbus ($1.2 million), Dayton ($786,492), Findlay ($32,288), Sandusky ($25,457), and Youngstown ($135,557).

Contact Tahree Lane at: tlane@theblade.com or 419-724-6075.