When Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina, the region's arts scene took enormous losses. The North Carolina Arts Foundation moved nearly $965,000 to artists and nonprofit arts organizations across 26 western counties.
That's the job. The foundation isn't a venue or a gallery. By its own description, it's a catalyst: a charitable nonprofit that brings private money to arts programs statewide, with young people as the top priority. Thousands of individual donors fund the work, along with foundations and musician Ben Folds.
The programs show how it works. Keys for Kids, started with Folds, gets keyboards and music lessons to students who might not have access to either. A+ Schools of North Carolina weaves the arts into everyday teaching across a network of schools, and the foundation is building an endowment to grow it. TAPS pays local artists to teach their communities' traditional arts through apprenticeships and afterschool programs, from music and dance to crafts.
There's a history project too, marking 100 years since the first commercial recordings made in the Southern Appalachians, cut at a hotel in Asheville in 1925.
Arts for all people. The money backs it up.