Advocacy has at its heart listening to the voiced needs of our members and finding solutions to those needs within our group and/or representing those needs to legislators and municipal representatives. Examples of recent and future advocacy efforts include the following:

 

We Give You a ‘Voice at the Table’

We Offer Fiscal Sponsorship

We Lead the Arts & Economic Prosperity (AEP6) Campaign in Coastal Fairfield County

We Have Relationships with Legislators

We Alert You to Advocacy Events

 

The Roadmap for Arts Cultural and Tourism

 

Connecticut Arts Alliance, Connecticut Humanities, and the Connecticut Tourism Coalition joined together to develop a comprehensive roadmap to help guide legislators to better state support for our communities. This is a campaign to secure more meaningful, reliable, and equitable state funding for arts, culture, and tourism. Three sessions on this topic were just wrapped up:

January 25  |  February 22March 29

Stakeholders in the arts, humanities, and tourism industry joined us to learn more about the roadmap and the legislative process.

THANK YOU to all who have worked to support the Arts, Culture and Tourism Roadmap. We’ve come a long way since the legislative session began and it is thanks to your work that we’re making such encouraging progress.

Here’s where we are:

On February 23, we turned out to support HB6692, An Act Authorizing Certain Arts, Culture, and Tourism Grants.

Thanks to all who testified, the bill was voted out of the Commerce Committee with bi-partisan support and a proposed $35 million in state funding. While this is a great start, we’re continuing to advocate for full funding at $58.5 million!

If your legislators are on the Commerce Committee, we encourage you to take a few minutes to send a thank you email. It doesn’t need to be fancy or long. “As a resident (or arts organization or artist, etc.) in your district, I thank you for your work on HB 6692 and its support for the arts community in our state. This bill is especially important to me because….[tell a personal story of what strong state investments in arts funding means to you.].”

On February 27, we opposed the Governor’s proposed $13.8 million budget for arts, culture, and tourism.

Going back to pre-pandemic funding levels would send us back to an environment of funding scarcity rather than building on our current momentum. Instead, we urged the Appropriations Committee to support the Funding Roadmap at $58.5 million so the state can realize the full economic, community, and quality of life benefits that we bring.

What’s next?

HB6692 now sits in the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. We are encouraging the committee to refer the bill to the Appropriations Committee, where we will work to amend the bill to fully fund the roadmap at $58.5 million. 

Please ask your legislators to co-sponsor HB 6321 as a way to bring more meaningful, reliable, and equitable state funding to this coalition of Arts, Culture and Tourism (ACT) organizations.

If your legislators include the following, please thank them for already co-sponsoring this bill: 

Rep. Lucy Dathan (House 142) – Norwalk, New Canaan
Rep. Sarah Keitt (House 134) – Fairfield
Rep. Jennifer Leeper (House 132) – Fairfield
Rep. David Michel (House 146) –  StamfordIf your representative is Steve Meskers (Old Greenwich) who is co-chair of the Commerce Committee, please ask him for a public hearing for this bill.Don’t know who your legislators are? Go to: https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp