If I were to introduce myself at a grantwriter’s anonymous meeting (just go with me on this one), it would go something like this:
Hi, everybody. My name’s Michèle.
(Hi, Michèle, everyone would say.)
And I like writing 50-100 words on the impact of our organization on the surrounding local community and following that up with a print confirmation of our tax exempt status.
I’m a 19 year old Boise native. I’m a college student seeking a Bachelor’s of Arts at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. I’ve worked with TVCT since I was 10 as a performer, educator, administrator, director, tech worker, and student. And I am currently lucky to work with TVCT as a grant writer.
Over the past year, I have had the great opportunity to work closely with Autumn and the TVCT team to dive headfirst into the world of nonprofit funding; accruing as of June 15 $7,483 in donor funding to help the theater’s mission. As someone who has been with the theater since its beginnings in 2013, I’m very excited to lend my perspective to this area of the theater sector.
In all seriousness, I could not be luckier to work with Autumn and the TVCT team in fulfilling the TVCT mission, because I know first hand that it changes lives. Over the past year, we have worked with students ages 5-18 in our online drama clubs and with our adapted tour. That was our stage 1: working with the direct hit that came from a global pandemic. Our focus was on making sure that despite the sudden shift to online learning and living for our students around the valley, we were still offering quality arts education that was suddenly now even more necessary than ever. We increased our teaching hours and enrollment in programs with grant funds and support from our donors and The Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation. In winter and early spring of 2021, we launched an adapted version of our traditional in person school tour for grades 5-9 that utilized our new knowledge of online theater. That tour reached 54 classrooms around the valley, and we were again proud to provide low or no cost options to schools that needed them thanks to sponsorships and grant funds the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Meridian Arts Commission, HC Company, and generous donors.
In the past six months alone, we have become comfortable stretching ourselves to practice excellence, a core TVCT value, while recognizing our full potential in a post covid world. As a small business, our strengths lie in our unique capabilities to work anywhere, with anyone. Moving forward with that idea, we chose to focus on the significance of increasing valley-wide (and maybe one day, state-wide) access to the arts. You may have heard by now that we’ve made a large investment this summer: a 30 foot long trailer that, luckily, I will not be allowed to tow.
This mobile stage exemplifies our 2021 attitudes coming into a post pandemic world: it is more important that art is seen/created/grappled with/loved than it is that art is presented in the most beautiful venue. If the pandemic has taught me anything besides how to make sourdough, it’s that art happens everywhere. The trailer will make its debut at Centennial Park with our 2021 Summer Theater in the Park trio of shows, but we’re not done after that! We here at TVCT are challenging ourselves to now expand our bubble and focus on providing access to all with the mobile stage. With the investment of this trailer comes a new era of growth, and we plan to continue the programs we all know and love while pushing onwards and upwards to bring art all around the valley.
It’s been a busy year, despite the new challenges of staying safe throughout the pandemic. However, I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s because of donors like you, who contribute to TVCT’s programs across the board, who change the lives of students like me… who grow up to work to make sure that others have the same opportunity.
