Happy holidays from all of us at the Kentucky Arts Council. We hope you are enjoying the season and are supporting local artists as part of your gift giving to friends and family. And we’d like to remind you that in addition to amazing works of visual and performing art, gifts like museum memberships, season tickets to your local theater company, music ensemble or dance group are also great ways to support the arts this holiday season.

Save the date – Jan. 10 – for Kentucky Arts Day. Join Kentuckians for the Arts at the state capitol in Frankfort for a celebration of Kentucky creativity, and to meet with state legislators to advocate for the arts in your communities and across the state. For more information about Arts Day, visit the Kentuckians for the Arts website.

Even though the holidays are upon us, we are looking ahead to January. You won’t want to miss the first presentation of 2024 in the arts council’s Creative Industry Summit Series. “Look Sharp! The Key to Well Produced Printed Material” will provide helpful information about how to work with your printing service provider, and effective use of graphic design tools to create attention grabbing and uncluttered postcards, flyers and other printed material to promote yourself. Check your email inbox, social media and our website for updated information, including date and time, on this webinar.

The most recent episode of our podcast, KyArtsCast, features Hip Hop Into Learning (HHN2L), a 2022 recipient of a $500,000 Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize for Music. We talk with HHN2L cofounder NyRee Clayton-Taylor about the work HHN2L is doing in Kentucky and how receiving the Accelerator Award has been a game changer for the organization.

Our regional partner South Arts is offering three new grant opportunities, and we hope you’ll visit their site, learn more about them and apply. The Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grants are awards of up to $2,000, and the deadline to apply for those is Jan. 8.

Infrastructure Grants, which are part of South Arts’ In These Mountains initiative, are grants of $30,000 for arts organizations in Appalachian Regional Commission counties in Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee. The deadline to apply for that grant is Jan. 31.

Presentation Grants of up to $9,500 for organizations in South Arts’ nine-state region help arts organizations present a southern artist for performing arts, literary arts, visual arts or film engagements. That program’s deadline is March 1.

There's a new grantmaking initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with South Arts and in collaboration with the five other U.S. Regional Arts Organizations, that supports increased opportunities for arts participation. ArtsHERE invests in organizations that have demonstrated a commitment to equity within their practices and programming, with the goal of increasing arts participation for underserved groups/communities, and sharing insights that may inform similar funding programs in the future. The deadline to submit a statement of interest is Jan. 19.

We wish you a joyous holiday season and a prosperous new year.