Falmouth Cultural Council Announces FY22 Grant Recipients

The Falmouth Cultural Council has awarded $20,000 in grants to 28 individuals and organizations for FY2023 local arts and culture programs and projects.

The Falmouth Cultural Council received $8,400 from the Mass Cultural Council, an additional $10,000 from the Town of Falmouth, and supplemented those funds with $1,600 raised from the annual summer Falmouth ArtMarket.

Alice Kociemba, chair of the cultural council, said, “We are excited to be able to fund so many projects this year, most at the full amount requested by the applicants, thanks to Town Meeting support of Article 10, as amended, which provided an additional $10,000 to the council. Now we can better meet the community’s need for free, live, local cultural programming that will bring joy, hope, inclusion, and connection to Falmouth’s year-round, seasonal residents, and tourists.”   

The council is one of 329 local cultural councils (LLCs) across Massachusetts serving all 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. The State legislature provides an annual appropriation to the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency, which then allocates funds to each community. LLCs review applications submitted in the fall and distribute funds to individuals and organizations in the spring to pursue community-based projects in the arts, interpretive sciences, and humanities.

Grant recipients are enthusiastic about the opportunities provided by FCC funding.

Grant recipient Jacek Zuzanski of Dream Tale Puppets said, “We are incredibly grateful for Falmouth Cultural Council’s support, which provides us with the means to cultivate our vision of what puppet theatre can do. This inspires us to continue reaching out to potential new partners, collaborators, presenters, and educators with whom we will keep developing new audiences and ways to better serve our communities.”

“This generous grant from the Falmouth Cultural Council provides us with the seed money to begin a brand-new workshop that will introduce artists, crafters, and performers in Falmouth to a new way to expand their outreach and increase their exposure by utilizing today’s most popular video streaming platforms,” said Anthony Sadera of Falmouth Community Television.

Musician Lisa Esperson said, “This grant allows Cape Rhythm to present traditional percussion music from cultures of the Atlantic Circle to the Falmouth Public Elementary school children, music that they would not otherwise be able to see or hear.”

“The funds are helping me to create and produce a special “Earth Day” Concert for Falmouth on Saturday, April 22,” said singer/songwriter Dawna Hammers. There is a great bio-resonant connection between the Earth and the song, drum & dance of the people on the Earth, which is especially timely given global warming and environmental depletion.

The complete list of grant recipients is as follows:

The Arts & Justice Collective, Community House Parties, $500
Davis R. Bates III, Raising Our Voices: A Summer Reading Performance, $550
Beyond the Bounds, Inc., Beyond the Bounds 2023, $1,000
Cahoon Museum of American Art, Inc., Wampum Exhibit Community Access, $500
Calliope Poetry Series, Inc., Wish You Were Here: Postcards from the Past, $1,200
Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Inc., Summer Chamber Music Concert in Falmouth, $500
Children’s Discovery Museum of Cape Cod, Inc., Oceans and Waterways WHOI, $1,000
College Light Opera Company, Inc., CLOC’s Community Shows: June 2023, $1,000
Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Inc., Rise and Shine Program, $250
Lisa Esperson, Drum Rhythms from Around the Atlantic, $750
Falmouth Artists Guild, Inc., Art History Lectures, $750
Falmouth Chamber Players, Inc., Falmouth Chamber Players Spring Concert, $500
Falmouth Community Television Corporation, Inc., Streaming for Creators, $907
Falmouth Historical Society, Discovery Backpack, $750
Falmouth Jazz, Inc., Celebrating Women Blues Singers: Women’s History Month, $550
Falmouth Village Association, Falmouth Village Movies Under the Stars, $1,000
Good Grief Cape Cod, Good Grief Expressive Art Program, $1,000
Dawna Hammers, Earth Day Concert, $700
Historic Highfield, Inc., End to End: Artists with the Land and Sea—Summer Exhibition 2023, $1,000
Stephen Lewis, Nuclear Energy—Is There a Future? An International Poster Exhibit, $195
Pamela Means, Pamela Means Presents the Power of the Protest Song: Our Shared History and Present Day, $950
North Falmouth Village Association, Inc., What’s My Message?, $400
Skylark Vocal Ensemble, Inc., Sauntering Songs, $1,000
West Falmouth Library, Inc., Bringing the Zoo to You, $450
Mary Wilson, Puppets, Paul, & Mary Show, $500
Woods Hole Film Festival, Inc., Woods Hole Film Festival Celebrates Black History Month, $1,000
Woods Hole Historical Museum, Improvements to the Museum, $429
Jacek Zuzanski, Dream Tale Puppets, Puppet Show “Alice, or Red King’s Dream” and accompanying workshops, $669.

Current members of the Falmouth Cultural Council are Alice Kociemba, chair; Ilene Karnow, secretary, Marilyn Rowland, treasurer, Carrie Fradkin, Stacey Wiessbock, Susan Stern, George Scharr, and Nikki Engstrom. The Council meets monthly at Town Hall or on Zoom, as conditions require.

For more information about the Falmouth Cultural Council, email falmouthcultural@gmail.com or visit falmouthculturalcouncil.org.