Part-time artists in the Upstate will have a chance to better promote themselves and their art under a new federal grant.
The US Department of Agriculture announced two new grants for South Carolina as part of its Rural Business Enterprise Grants program. One, a $90,000 award, will allow a local crafts gallery to search across the Upstate for part-time and hobby artists to help them better promote themselves and their products.
The Carolina Foothills Artisan Center plans to use the money to scour across the eight-county area to find individuals interested in making their products more widely available. The Center hopes to find at least one hundred budding artists under the grant and help them move into full-time jobs with their art. Eventually, the Center hopes to post the artists and their work to a website. This site will save potential artists the struggle of learning how to market their art on their own.
The Carolina Foothills Artisan Center is a non-profit gallery in Chesnee that showcases new art and crafts from Upstate artists. It opened in 2000 and has over 2,000 square feet of exhibition space.
Another $200,000 RBEG grant will go towards the Southern Carolina Regional Development Alliance to help it train new employees. The Alliance plans to work with the University of South Carolina-Salkehatchie’s Leadership Institute to create technical skills training programs for people in Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, and Hampton Counties–an area with very high unemployment.
