Looking back on Late Summer (the successful grant report)

In the frosty depths of what might prove to be a record breaking cold snap for Rhode Island, thinking a few months back to August and September and their warm breezes takes a fairly serious act of imagination. When it's winter like this I sometimes have a hard time summoning the memory of other realities, of other seasons. Our routine these days is: wake up as early as possible, go check on the pipes at the wedding cake house, do some stuff on site while the propane heater runs in the room with the fragile lead water supply line, try not to think about the part of said supply line with a bulge that we call "the mouse" as in the supply line is a snake and there is part of it that's puffed out like a when a snake unhooks it's jaw and gobbles up a rodent whole, think up ways to have more peace of mind that this epic cold snap will not destroy our water supply line, do some office work off site, check back in on the pipe about 3 times a day and repeat.  But anyway, the reason that I even brought up early Fall was to tell you about the grant writing part of those days.

While we were blogging in August and September, let's be honest, we were not, dear reader, telling you everything. The reality was that we were mostly writing about the work that we were doing on site, but actually we were working on site by day, and then by night, gazing deeply into the glow of our computers. We were busy crafting long and detailed narratives about why rehabbing this building for our proposed arts use is a good idea, and why, after so many failed attempts at developing this property, a couple of women artists were going to be the people who were able to pull off what other developers and real estate professional weren't.  Obviously we had our work cut out for us. We put in 4 major grants with application processes that ranged from short Letters of Intent with follow up interviews, to applications that involved 156 page 18 tabbed multi-binder beasts.  Three of these grants were funded, one we will re-apply to in March. While we still have a long way to go, having the support of these organizations is incredibly helpful at this point in the process and we're both very humbled and motivated by these votes of confidence. Here are links that lead to information about the organizations and funds that are supporting this project.

RISCA - State Cultural Facilities Grants

Champlin Foundation

Andy Warhol Foundation