Community Engagement

In addition to having our community survey online, Council members go to a variety of events and venues in Falmouth to ask our residents and visitors what projects they want us to fund. Our Survey.

Because we receive a yearly allocation from the Town of Falmouth, we begin at April’s Annual Town Meeting as a way of thanking the Town Meeting Members for their support and to ask them what they think the town needs for arts and cultural programming.

We continue to go to community events, such as the community-wide festival, ArtsAlive; the weekly Falmouth Farmers Market; the Falmouth Service Center; the summer ArtMarket; and even the Falmouth Dog Park to get as broad a response as possible. We ask for community feedback until mid-July. This extensive and personal community outreach has helped us have confidence that our Funding Priorities and Programming Priorities are in sync with what the community wants.

See the Priorities’ list HERE.

At the Falmouth Service Center

At the Falmouth Farmers Market

Music Outreach Program to the Homeless

Mwalim, Music at the Table

During the course of conducting our community survey, we heard from a homeless man how important music was for him. He walked from his camp behind a big box store to where the Town Band performs. Once these concerts end on Labor Day weekend, he had no way to listen to music.

Out of his story, came the Council’s new project, Music at the Table. We set aside $1,000 of Mass Cultural Council funds to provide live music on a weekly basis to A Place at the Table, a free lunch program at Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church. Community members have donated over $2,500 to fund the musicians’ stipend. Would you help us continue the program year-round with a DONATION?

Read about how we developed this music outreach program HERE.

Advocating for Town of Falmouth Funds

It was a long, but worthwhile journey to receive a $10,000 yearly allocation of Town of Falmouth Funds. Here is a roadmap for other local cultural councils who may wish to pursue obtaining funds from their municipality to augment their Mass Cultural Council allocation. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. From every mistake we made, we learned who our allies are! Reach out to the Cultural Council if you’d like more information.

• Find out how your town government works.

  • Falmouth has a Representative Town Meeting form of government with 243 Town Meeting members in 9 precincts, and an at-large Town Meeting moderator. Our town moderator, David Vieira, helped us with the process for getting a properly worded petition article in the warrant that was voted on at the November 14, 2023 Town Meeting.

  • We found out what the Finance Committee needed from the Council to get their support for our petition article.

  • We went to all 9 precinct meetings and gave handouts to town meeting members on the rationale for our petition.

  • We learned that many of our Town Meeting members were active in the arts.

• Prepare the rationale for why you want your local cultural council to receive local funds.

  • We engaged the general public by writing letters to the editor of our local newspaper. We were also interviewed on our local community television station about why town funds were essential. See an example of our community engagement HERE.

  • We documented the fact that we were not able to fully fund all the worthy grant applications, and that the pool of applicants had increased in the past 3 years. After we received town funds, we were able to fully fund 90% of our approved applications, up from 65% before the addition of these funds.

  • We listed all the organizations and projects we had funded during a three-year period so that town meeting members would be aware of how central our funding is to Falmouth’s cultural life.

  • We made a powerpoint presentation at Town Meeting that showed, among other things, the economic impact of cultural programming on local revenue.

  • We stressed that the arts are a necessary part of our local economy, and we showed how cultural programs support the tourism industry which benefit the town’s finances.

• We asked for $7,300. Town Meeting members amended our petition and voted that the Falmouth Cultural Council would receive $10,000. We found tremendous support at the grassroots level for the arts in Falmouth!

Student Representatives

Sadie Inman

One of the voices that hasn’t been included in our decision-making is our young people. To bridge this divide, we sought out student members who, like all council members, have full voting rights. They help us learn what programs appeal to their peers and provide us with their ideas for innovative projects in the arts, humanities and interpretive sciences.

Our first student representative is Sadie Inman, a Falmouth High School senior. She will reach out to her classmates and teachers for incoming student representatives to our Council.