The Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission heard Wednesday from 11 grant applicants seeking funding in 2021 to help promote tourism and culture in the Pine Bluff/Jefferson County area.
In 2020, the A&P Commission awarded $202,000 to 11 local organizations for events and programming that were scheduled for 2020 before the covid-19 pandemic began wreaking havoc.
Some of the organizations that had to cancel events in 2020 were the Black Pilots Association, the UAPB Alumni Homecoming Golf Tournament, the Merrill High All School Reunion, and the Gloves not Guns program. The Black Pilots Association and the Gloves not Guns program submitted applications for 2021.
This year the commission heard from the Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas, the Black Pilots Association, the Pine Bluff Historical District Commission and Southeast Arkansas College, and several other organizations gave presentations to expand upon their grant applications for events or performances scheduled for 2021.
Rachel Miller, director of the Arts and Science Center, described the center's offerings during the year to provide art education for children and adults alike.
"These activities include such things as our after school family program, live music, live theater performances, art exhibitions, artist talks, summer camps and adult outreach workshops," Miller said. "Our audience has grown every year and grown more diverse."
Miller said that despite the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on society, the center had been able to provide greater virtual programming than before.
"Unlike other museums that had to seek out funding to buy technology to transition to a virtual platform, the Arts and Science Center already had that technology available," she said. "We were able to pretty much transition all of our available programming."
"You are open to the public, although you restrict the number of visitors there?" asked Commissioner Bill Moss. "Is that correct?"
"That is correct," Miller responded. "We only allow 10 visitors in at a time, and that's in the museum/gallery spaces."
Les Morris, with the Black Pilots of America, which holds its annual Operation Skyhook Fly-in to the Pine Bluff Airport every year, gave a brief update of the organization's plans for the coming year, with 2021 being a special year for the organization.
"This will be the 50th anniversary for Skyhook," Morris said. "It started in 1967 down in Yazoo City, Miss., and it's gone other places but it's here in Pine Bluff now and it has been here for some 20 or 23 years."
Elbert Brewer, creator of the Gloves not Guns program, said that past support from the A&P Commission had helped the program grow to a position of influence in amateur boxing circles in the state.
"One of my goals," Brewer said, "and it's no secret, is to make Pine Bluff the boxing capital of Arkansas."
Grant awards will be announced in December.