MW Main Street director seeks planning grant for cultural art events
Aug. 3—MINERAL WELLS — A spring arts festival for Mineral Wells took an early step Tuesday when the city council gave its blessing to Main Street Program Manager Myndi Muncy to seek a $50,000 planning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The NEA's Our Town program encourages communities, in partnership with a nonprofit organization, to create cultural arts events.
The $25,000 grant application requires a governmental entity to join the partnership but not necessarily contribute to a $25,000 local match, according to the NEA website.
Muncy and Main Street Advisory Board Member Carol Kaspar said the most the city would be asked to contribute is $5,000. Muncy said later she hopes to raise the entire $25,000 match through local efforts.
"We're hoping to not have to ask anything from the city," she said.
If awarded, the grant and its local match will fuel planning and implementation of a downtown arts festival in spring 2024.
"We want it to be fully immersive, turning downtown over to the arts for the weekend," Muncy said.
Toward that end, Muncy said artists from Palo Pinto County "and anyone willing to come" will be invited to monthly networking sessions. Muncy said the Brazos Creative Collective created by the NEA grant will allow artists " ...just to collaborate and share their work."
She also said the collective will be open to all artists of all ages.
"The biggest thing outside of that is to create the cultural arts festival which will be in the spring of 2024," she said. "And the theme will be, 'What is Arts to You?'"
Mundy said the endowment for the arts is set to award the actual festival funding in July 2023.
"And then the planning will begin," she said.
Kaspar, the Main Street board's promotions chairwoman, said word of the festival already is spreading in the local arts community.
"We have been overwhelmed at the response so far," she said.
Envision Mineral Wells, which produced the myriad murals throughout downtown, will be the nonprofit partner. But Muncy added the city council will "put their eyes" on every step along the way.
"I think it's time," she said. "We have the murals, we have all the artists. And everyone is running full steam ahead. We see a need to bring them all together."
Council members were enthusiastic about the festival prospect.
"I'm excited for it," Mayor Pro Tem Doyle Light told Muncy and Kaspar. "We already know that's the direction Mineral Wells is going."
City Manager Dean Sullivan said the festival effort will dovetail with a long-range plan the council recently began.
"A lot of this can be incorporated in the comprehensive plan when it comes to culture and the arts," Sullivan said. "The comprehensive plan is very much to define where you want to go in the next 20 years. I think this is a positive first step."
