The Weston Cultural Council helps to fund events, lectures, performances, and other activities in the arts, humanities, and sciences through annual grants to qualified applicants. The Council is charged with distributing money in the form of grants allotted to the Town by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency supporting the arts, humanities, and sciences. The Massachusetts Cultural Co
uncil's Local Cultural Council (LCC) Program is the largest grassroots cultural funding network in the nation, supporting thousands of community-based projects in the arts, humanities, and sciences annually. Each year, local councils award more than $2 million in grants to more than 5,000 cultural programs statewide. Weston receives state funds grant at the local level, and the town usually matches them. Municipally appointed volunteers meet and decide how to distribute the money to projects that promote access, education, diversity and excellence in three areas:
• Arts -- including crafts, performing, visual, media, folk, design, literary, and interdisciplinary arts.
• Humanities -- including history, social studies, philosophy, criticism, and literature.
• Interpretive Sciences -- engaging people in learning about nature, science, and technology in ways that connect to their lives. Grants support an enormous range of grass-roots activities: concerts, exhibitions, radio and video productions, field trips for schoolchildren, after-school youth programs, writing workshops, historical preservation efforts, lectures, nature and science education programs for families and town festivals. Who qualifies for WCC funding? According to the requirements determined by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, anyone may qualify for funding if:
• There must have a public benefit to the citizens of Weston.
• Applicants may not be discriminated against on the basis of race, s*x, religion, creed, color, national origin, disability, or age.
• Funds must not be used to substitute or replace current or previously funded public programs of a municipality, such as schools or libraries.
