Blues Fest, SRCA Among Big Winners of Celebrate Kent Grants

Several festivals and organizations will get $1,700 to $2,000 for events planned in downtown Kent this year.

Kent City Council voted in committee this week to distribute $10,000 as part of the annual grant program dubbed Celebrate Kent!

The big winners in the grant pool were Standing Rock Cultural Arts, which will receive $2,000 for each of two programs — the Who’s Your Mama Earth Day and Environmental Film Festival and the amalgamation of Downtown Innovative Community Events that include the annual cider festival and summer sidewalk cinemas.

The other big winner is the Crooked River Arts Council, which organizes the Kent Blues Fest and Reggae Meltdown music events. The blues fest will receive $1,700 and the reggae fest will get $800.

Bridget Susel, director of Kent’s Community Development Department, which administers the program, said this year one of the biggest events supported by the grant program missed the deadline: the Kent State Folk Festival.

The folk fest has received $10,000 from the city for the past several years.

Having only $10,000 this year for the program, where in 2012 Kent dispersed $30,000, proved challenging, Susel said.

“If the Kent State Folk Festival had gotten in it would have been an extremely challenging situation,” she said. “What I was able to do was keep everybody pretty much equivalent to where they were last year.”

The remaining events and their grant amounts are: Kent Jaycees Grill for Good, $800; Western Reserve Folk Arts Association Downtown Kent Ghost Walk, $700; All Together Now Inc. Kent Community Dinners, $1,000; Haymaker Farmer’s Market Music @ the Market, $800.

Kent Mayor Jerry Fiala said one element to consider is that these events and groups also get in-kind services from the city, essentially free of charge, such as police and fire response and health department services.

“We may be giving them another $1,000 in in-kind service,” he said.