NEA $125,000 Grant Brings Together Artists, Transit Stops and Public for Creative Boost

A Merrimack Valley Transit—or MeVa—bus. (WHAV News file photograph.)

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a $125,000 “Our Town” grant to Essex County Community Foundation, Merrimack Valley Planning Commission and Merrimack Valley Transit to advance arts and culture in and around bus stops.

The project will engage with artists to improve access to and from arts and cultural hubs through signage, maps, guides and cultural tours, and to create safe, vibrant and welcoming bus stops, shelters and transit hubs; build and support a coalition of creative leaders across the region to advance placemaking, place keeping, creative space development and creative sector advocacy; and identify new cultural development projects to advance the Planning Commission’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy and ECCF’s systems change strategies for the creative sector.

Merrimack Valley Planning Commission Executive Director Jerrard Whitten said “This regional project will create a lasting legacy of connectivity, cultural enrichment and community resilience.”

Since 2019, the Foundation’s Creative County Initiative and the Planning Commission have collaborated on cultural planning and asset mapping across the Merrimack Valley. In 2023, the organizations launched MVCulture and hired Jenny Arndt to serve as the first Merrimack Valley arts & culture specialist. For the last eight months, Arndt has been working to build community around arts and culture planning as a fundamental cornerstone of downtown vibrancy and sustainable economic development. Money from the National Endowment for the Arts will broaden the scope of that work.

Karen Ristuben, program director of Creative County, said the grant presents an opportunity “change the public’s mindset about public transit as a critical element of community culture.”

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