First HIT Victory: Being Granted Our First Grant

This evening is an exciting one.

We just got a grant.

"From whom?"  You might ask, perhaps with an impractically high-class British Accent.

The Grant itself is through the 2010-2011 Oregon Cultural Trust Participation Grant Program.  And the grant we just received from the program is given by the Umatilla County Cultural Coalition.

(That last name has some wicked alliteration in it.)

To top it off, under this same approval for the grant we were hired by the Milton-Freewater Area Historical Society in Oregon to help the communities of Milton-Freewater to tell their stories, using our resources and theatrical know-how.  Reciprocally, of course, this will allow us to have visibility and a chance to show off our artistic ingenuity and ability to tell stories in unique found spaces.  The completed production that would result from all of this, by the way, will go down (or go up, if we're using theatrical phrasing) next Summer in 2011.  And come this Winter Break, Ben & Elana are headed up North to Oregon to begin research.

For those of you who are curious, though, I wanted to write up a sneak peak into how the application process went.

First off, Ben found out about the Grant and told us about it.  Even though he's down here in the Bay Area, slogging away as a graduate student, he's also a native to Milton-Freewater and heard about the exciting opportunity through his peeps up there.  So, Ben wrote up a grant application for HIT.

But, aside from Ben writing out our artistic intentions, we also had to map out our budgetary needs--that's where Sarah & Elana, and our amazing design team, came together in a beautiful mash-up of financial love.

Elana, as you may or may not know, is our Artistic Director/Founder.*  And Sarah, btws, is our Managing Director.**

The two of these big wigs went to work on mapping out how much money was needed at the bare minimum for each department (sets, lights, props, etc.) to work a fully fledged production in Oregon.   The kind of brain effort that must have taken is not comfortable for me.  So, I'm going to stop trying to think about that, and just tell you how they pulled it off:

Before they set out to write any numbers down, they first went to us, their designers and asked us what bare minimum supplies we need to do our jobs.  They took our requests, the time limit, the amount of driving it takes to cross state borders and likelihood of reusing any resources possible into account and viola!  A budget was born.

One other thing, which I just found interesting, is that Sarah also asked us designers for our Dream List.  Not just any list, no.  A Dream List.  A list that is filled with not only the things you want to buy but can't right now, but the things you would buy if the company had $1,000,000.00. 

Naturally, I asked for a jacuzzi.  I'm still waiting on that, Sarah.  I think it'll be the first thing that the grant is used for--right?  Right?

Guys?

I'll have to check in on that with them.

for now, cheers and HIT, HIT Hurray!

-Beryl

*Artistic Director = Person who has supreme artistic voice in the vision and mission statement of a theatre company, including all productions done within the season and any outside commissioned pieces.

** Managing Director = Person who works round the clock to be in the know on how to keep us financed, legal, and thus, happy.