According to Illinois Art Station (IAS) Executive Director Hannah Johnson, approximately $10,000 (or 4%) of IAS’s annual budget is supported by Illinois Arts Council’s General Operating grant, and they are also the recipient of smaller programmatic grants throughout the year. IAS is also named in the National Endowment for the Arts grant that the Town of Normal received to support the art installation (mural) in conjunction with the future underpass project (which could also be significantly impacted by the shifting federal funding landscape). In some ways, IAS is once again in the position it was when it came into being as an independent nonprofit in Spring 2020. The corporate philanthropy landscape was shifting at that time, which meant that though IAS wasn’t impacted directly, it meant that IAS would never be the beneficiary of those corporate dollars in the ways that other organizations had enjoyed decades prior. This situation is similar in that IAS is not the current beneficiary of direct federal funding, but it also means any opportunities for IAS to access federal funding in the future could be seriously diminished.
Illinois Art Station’s close working relationship with multiple Illinois State University departments/offices makes it such that their work can be easily impacted by variables that influence ISU’s operations and the university’s capacities to support its students and teachers. One such example is IAS’s pending application for a $70,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation in collaboration with Dr. Chang Su-Russel of ISU’s Department of Family and Consumer Science. They are cautiously optimistic that they have submitted a competitive research grant that would support early learning, social emotional, visual arts education for diverse and economically disadvantaged young artists aged 2-5 in formal and informal learning environments. This would be a three year grant funding the pre-work, facilitation, and evaluation of these programs with the goal of determining the significance of place (classroom, library, art studio) for early learners