Flushing Town Hall is celebrating 46 years as a cultural institution in Queens and received a $450,000 funding injection for the local arts community.
Grant awards were distributed to 70 different art groups and artists throughout the borough, as part of re-grant funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and Howard Gilman Foundation. As an arts council, Flushing Town Hall supports the borough’s creatives by selecting artists and organizations to receive grants of up to $10,000 each.
Grant applications are evaluated by an independent peer panel comprised of artists, cultural workers, arts administrators, community organizers, and Queens community leaders.
Additionally, as Flushing Town Hall celebrates its 46th anniversary, its new Queens Arts and Culture Map was presented for the first time on Sept. 17 at the Queens Arts & Culture Map Launch & Artist Meetup.
The map, funded by NYSCA, serves as a digital resource to connect artists, cultural organizations and community spaces throughout Queens. It was designed by Nolen Phya and Oussama Ouadani, who presented it alongside the Flushing Town Hall Arts Services team.
Flushing Town Hall led the initiative, conducting over 150 interviews with artists and cultural organizations across the borough to create the map. Many of these artists and organizations are also Flushing Town Hall grant recipients.
In 2024, Flushing Town Hall was invited by NYSCA to lead the Queens Cultural Mapping Initiative, which was designed to document the unique, diverse artistic landscape of the borough. designed to document the rich and diverse artistic landscape of Queens. Now in “Year One,” the map is considered the living document of the Queens arts community, as arts and culture organizations with a physical location in the borough can submit a listing and join the map.
“As we mark Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts’ 46th year as a presenting arts council, we are proud to continue supporting the artists and organizations that reflect the extraordinary diversity of Queens,” said Ellen Kodadek, executive director of Flushing Town Hall. “The $450,000 in grants and the launch of the Queens Arts and Culture Map underscore our commitment to strengthening the borough’s cultural landscape and ensuring that its creative voices continue to flourish.”
Kodadek added that Flushing Town Hall looks forward to including the voices and perspectives of artists and arts organizations in “Year Two” of the map.
Flushing Town Hall offers two major grants that Queens-based art groups and artists can apply for: Art Grants for Queens and the Go Queens Grant. Arts Grants for Queens, funded by NYSCA, funds arts and culture projects that enrich and enliven the community with grants from $1,000 to $7,500 per project.
This year’s grant recipients included the Jackson Heights Mural Project, which is creating a large-scale mural on Roosevelt Avenue, and Rockaway Arts Alliance, for its two-week-long Young Artists Workshop at Fort Tilden.
The Howard Gilman Foundation funded the Go Queens Grant of $10,000 each, which was awarded to 25 Queens-based performing arts and culture organizations with annual operating budgets under $250,000 that have the performing arts as a core focus or component of their organization’s identity.
