A group aiming to jazz up downtown Nanaimo this fall, hopes a grant isn’t the only benefit the city sends its way.
The Nanaimo International Jazz Festival Association will get a $4,000 culture and heritage grant for its inaugural event this September, but it also has hopes the city can supply it with other benefits, such as exploring becoming a sister city with New Orleans.
“Wouldn’t that be wonderful if we could do that in time for the festival and wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could bring up some musicians from New Orleans to help us in the celebration of 100 years of jazz, 150 years of Canada?” asked Andrew Homzy, president of the international jazz festival. “New Orleans is the birth place of jazz.”
City council agreed Monday to dole out more than $300,000 in operating and project grants to community groups this year. Not all organizations got what they asked for, including the jazz festival association which requested $11,500 and Nanaimo African Heritage Society which asked for a $10,200 operating grant and received $4,117. But no one has appealed their share of the pot.
Money is allocated based on assessment criteria and applications are reviewed by a staff and peer group before recommendations are made to the Community Vitality Committee, according to the city.
Pacific Coast Stage Co. got the largest project grant at $6,878 for the Nanaimo Fringe Festival, followed by Nanaimo Sings! for its choral fest at $4,958 and the international jazz festival. The largest operating grants were the VI Symphony with $87,167 and Theatre One with $42,900, two of four organizations in the second of three-year city funding.
Shalema Gantt, founder and president of the Nanaimo African Heritage Society, said when it asks for a hand out from anybody she is always pleased to get something. But she also said when she asks for $10,000, it’s because she needs $10,000, which means she has to find the money somewhere else.
Homzy said it would have been better to have the $11,500, which would give them more breathing room, but he has faith the committee did the best job in distributing the money.
The dollars will go toward the festival happening Sept. 15-17 with a New Orleans-style parade down Commercial Street, past venues that will host jazz musicians, and an outdoor concert at Diana Krall Plaza –the only public space Homzy knows of that’s named after a jazz musician.
Homzy pitched the idea of New Orleans as a sister city at a council meeting Monday, which Coun. Diane Brennan called an interesting and exciting idea. She’s asked city staff to meet with Homzy to discuss it.