Taken for granted

This year, in an effort to show its commitment to and appreciation of the performing arts, the City of Ventura is reaching out to local musicians by promoting more than ever the annual Artist Fellowship Award, a grant offering $2,000 for emerging artists and $5,000 for established artists who live and perform in Ventura. The award has been offered for over a decade, with the annual grants alternately geared toward visual and performing artists; however, the response from musicians has consistently been lower than that from other area artists.

“I think that individual performers are probably the least visible in Ventura,” said Cultural Affairs Supervisor Eric Wallner.  He noted that this year, the Cultural Affairs Division has made “a conscious effort to do better outreach for the program.”

The fellowship is fairly simple: The deadline for application submission, Aug. 18, is fast approaching, and, with $40,000 allocated to the fellowship, the Cultural Affairs Division is encouraging submissions from all interested area musicians.

To get the word out, Wallner enlisted the help of Doc Rogers, local musician and founder of the MAVRIC Awards. Now in its second year, the MAVRIC Awards ceremony aims to celebrate local musical talent and encourage community awareness and appreciation of Ventura County’s musicians. Rogers sees the Artist Fellowship Award and the MAVRIC Awards as two naturally compatible incarnations of the desire to foster growth in the Ventura music scene.

“The Cultural Affairs Depart-ment gets it,” Rogers said. “They understand that they have to keep the arts alive and thriving in this area.  They just don’t have the availability to do the outreach.

“We let as many people as we could, know,” Rogers continued.  “Within a few days of sending out the e-mail, I was surprised at how many calls we received …. Most of the people I’d spoken to had not heard that this was available for the city of Ventura.”

Rogers has been in contact with about two dozen performing artists who are serious about applying for the grant.  Last year, according to Wallner, about 50 artists applied for the Artist Fellowship Award. With this year’s increased publicity efforts, he expects those numbers to rise.

Clearly, local musicians are getting the message. Kylie Olivier, who has performed under the stage name Kylie Ki in Ventura for the better part of a decade, is applying for the grant this year.

“I think I just didn’t know about it,” she said when asked why she hadn’t taken advantage of the award before.  “I always thought it was a visual grant.”

Olivier and Rogers echo Wallner’s assertion that, if Ventura is to embody the title of “California’s New Art City,” the community must support and seek out local artists across various media and genres. The Artist Fellowship Award seeks to do both by having no regulations about how an artist can use the grant. “It’s unrestricted support,” Wallner said.

“There’s a symbiotic reach out to everything that happens in our community,” said Rogers.  “[The grant] money’s going to be sent right back into the community itself.”

For Olivier, the extra funds would help further the recording aspect of her career.  

“People have been pushing me and pushing me to write another album,” she said.  “I need to do that, and that costs money.”  She maintains that while making a living as a musician is notoriously difficult, an increase in the Ventura community’s appreciation for and support of local musicians would benefit everyone, not just starving-artist types.

“We have very little industry in Ventura,” Olivier said.  “It is absolutely vital that we keep quality musicians around to keep commerce.”

“This grant is going to help [artists] to be able to buy food and rent … and allow them to concentrate musically and artistically on what they do,” Rogers added.

Immediately, the promotion of the Artist Fellowship Award provides local musicians with access to a financial resource; the city and proponents of the Ventura music scene see this fellowship as a way to nurture ties between the community’s artists, economy and culture.

“We understand that if we give recognition to our artists, it will do nothing but better our local economy as well as our local artistic crowd,” Rogers said.   

To learn more about the Artist Fellowship Award, view grant guidelines and download an application, visit the Mavric awards main Web page at www.mavric-awards.com, or visit the Cultural Affairs page of the City of Ventura’s Web site, www.cityofventura.net.