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By ROBERT BAXTER
Courier-Post Staff
The New Jersey State Council on the Arts awarded $590, 000 in staffing grants to 11 South Jersey cultural groups at a meeting in Hackettstown on Tuesday.
The grants are the first cycle in the council's Southern New Jersey Staff Initiative, a four-year program designed to bolster the staffs of the region's arts groups. The money is part of the $5 million the council awarded South Jersey arts groups for fiscal 2002.
One Burlington County and four Camden County cultural institutions shared grants totaling $258,500.
The Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center in Camden won a $60, 000 grant to hire a technical director.
Pamela Bridgeforth let out a whoop of joy when she was informed of the Whitman Center's grant.
"This grant marks an extraordinary jump for us," said the center's executive director. "We have never had a technical director in the 25 years we have been a presenter.
"Everybody has been messing with the lights and sound in our booth. Now we will have a professional staff person to do the job. We are thrilled!"
Bridgeforth expects the technical director will be on the job by Sept. 1. The new hire will supervise the lights and sound for the center's music and theater performances and also work with the staff to develop a plan for upgrading the center's technical systems.
Other staffing grants were awarded to the Haddonfield Symphony, which got $36,000 for a marketing and development assistant; Perkins Center for the Arts, $57,500 for an assistant director; Puttin' on the Ritz Inc., $61,000 for a development director; and the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, $44,000 for a development director.
Bruce A. Curless, producing artistic director of the Ritz Theatre, was elated.
"We have a part-time grant writer now," explained Curless. "We've been relying on the board, the staff and volunteers to raise funds. Now we will have someone at the steering wheel who can drive us to a new level and put us on a stronger financial footing."
Also receiving a $48,000 grant for a financial administrator is the Arts and Business Partnership of Southern New Jersey. Based in Haddonfield but serving the entire region, the partnership works to match business volunteers with arts groups.
"We have been understaffed in the development area," noted acting director Dorothy Rivers. "This new position will allow us to go forward and devote our full time to focusing on bringing together arts groups and businesses."
The arts council developed the staffing initiative after a Courier-Post investigative series last year revealed funding inequities between arts groups in the northern and southern halves of the state.
The New Jersey Legislature later approved budget language guaranteeing South Jersey arts groups 25 percent of the arts council's $20 million budget.
On a listening tour of South Jersey last spring, the council discovered arts groups in the region needed increased staff. The council devised the initiative earlier this year.
The staffing initiative is a four-year program. Grants will pay the full salary for the first year and then be reduced by one-fourth in successive years until arts groups are able to pay the salaries themselves.
The council modeled the staffing initiative on a successful program created to increase staffs at county cultural and heritage commissions across the state.
