The City of Atlanta municipal code authorizes the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs (OCA) to provide a program of municipal support for the arts. For over three decades, the City of Atlanta has supported Atlanta’s thriving arts community by funding programs and projects related to the production, creation, presentation, exhibition, and managerial support of artistic and cultural services in the city of Atlanta through the OCA’s Contacts for Arts Services program.
In an effort to update the requirements of the program, to best suit the City’s ability to provide funding support to its arts community, the following changes have been implemented:
Since this is a funding support program, and not a bid for city services, removing procurement terminology from the program name will remove the assumption that procurement processes must be used for the administration of funding support.
The annual legislation will allow the City to shorten the timeline for disbursing grant funds, significantly reducing the burden on the small non-profit organizations that comprise most of the applicant pool.
The Municipal Support for the Arts program will remain the City of Atlanta’s means of granting public funding to the arts, providing general operating or project support to Atlanta’s non-profit arts and community organizations.