Meeting to decide local committee for Arts Trail on Oct. 24

The Phillips County Community is invited to attend a very important meeting at the Malta Business Center on Monday, October 24, 6 p.m. to discuss who will be participating in a local committee to decide on the arts installation project scope and to pick a representative who would be assigned to speak on behalf of Phillips County’s Project to the Special Advisory Committee for the Hi Line Arts Trail.

We, at Art Spot, can’t participate in this process, as we are the guides and partners that are helping to bring the funding into the community. Our community needs to choose the right person to represent Phillips County in this process and we are inviting all of you who feel deeply about Phillips County to step forward and work with us to find and encourage this person and the group who will support them.

Art Spot in Malta, Opportunity Link of Havre, and Hill County Commissioners have collaborated since October 2015 on a regional project spanning 11 counties and three native American reservations to bring $100,000 of National Endowment for the Arts funds to the Hi-Line to highlight our rich Montana heritage through arts expression.

Over the past six months, community conversations have been taking place across the Hi Line introducing the project and getting our communities ready to talk about how we want to best use the funds. At this time, each community has been asked to consider what it would create in the way of an arts presentation – either visual or performing arts – that would be presented to the NEA for consideration and approval. We are being asked to consider a budget of $7,500 per community, which will also have matching funds of equal amount, contributed in kind and/or cash by the projects supporters.

In Phillips County, the supporters are Judy Michael, Kathy Bagley, Kevin Campbell, Todd Mandeville, Phillips County Museum, and PhillCo Economic Growth Council. Our State Sponsor is Montana Arts Council.

Once the community decides on the project that would best represent Phillips County and add to our economic growth and tourism income, the project would go to a Special Advisory Committee made up of representatives from each community in the region who will decide which three to six projects best represent the Hi Line and its heritage and will send them to the National Endowment for the Arts for consideration.

Other communities involved in this decision are: Blaine County, Fort Belknap Reservation, Cascade County, Hill County, Rocky Boy Reservation, Blackfeet Reservation, Glacier County, Chouteau County, Liberty County, and Toole County.

Please call Art Spot at 406-654-1523 with any questions or comments. If you are interested in learning more about how National Endowment for the Arts has funded other communities, please go to https://www.arts.gov/exploring-our-town/showcase.