How can Fresno’s arts grants program be improved? Applicants have lots of opinions.

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Facilitator Laura Martina – founder and chief executive officer of Leadby, a leadership development firm in Fresno – said she will send all suggestions from brainstorming sessions on Dec. 2 and Dec. 10 to the Arts Council. Gonzáles Chávez said she would pass along the information to the Cultural Arts Subcommittee of the nine-member Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission, which provides oversight to Measure P. It’s up to the subcommittee what it does with the information, Gonzáles Chávez said.

Commissioner Laura Ward, who served in 2025 as chair of the subcommittee, attended the Dec. 10 session. She said the subcommittee has disbanded, probably to be reconstituted in the future. All feedback from the two brainstorming sessions should be shared and considered, Ward told The Munro Review.

Participants in the two sessions offered ideas and suggestions in six areas. In addition to using the sticky notes, people could respond electronically using a QR code.

Here are the six categories with a few (not all) ideas/suggestions in each category. (Some examples are lightly edited for clarity.)

Access and Equity

• Education for FAC/ grant panelists on DEI (cultural awareness, appropriation, classism, etc.) to improve objectivity in panel review. (Editor’s note: The panelists score grant applications, and the scores play a large role in determining funding.)

• Evaluate income for emerging vs. established organizations. Do we need to look at extending what is considered emerging? A one-year windfall from Measure P shouldn’t mean you’re established. Also, having organizations that are constantly over $1 million revenue be in the same category as organizations with a budget of $200,000 doesn’t seem like a level playing field.

Application design

•  Reduce redundancy of questions.

• Application process should require applicant to attend an in-person interview to pitch/explain their project/organization.

Community support

• More grant writing workshops and resources.

• Funded projects would benefit from use of City of Fresno parks and rec facilities for venues/events for free or low cost.

• Mature reception vs. defensiveness regarding community feedback, and misrepresentation of said feedback.

Communication and Outreach

•  Funded projects would benefit from a city-funded social media campaign promoting funded projects.

Transparency

• Accessibility and Brown Act compliance. This is a city grant – all communication should be recorded and available to the public.

• For grant review panelists, actively seek arts experts or arts administrators from neighboring communities (up and down the Central Valley), for the advantage of a broader perspective and for providing an equitable solution to hyper-local conflicts of interest.

Other considerations

• Pay panelists to honor their time and commitment.

At the Dec. 10 session, which drew 16 people, one successful applicant said he attended to help the grants process move forward. “I feel like there’s a lot of potential, a lot of room for improvement,” said Derek Payton, executive director of Root Access Hackerspace. It’s a workspace in the Tower District where members can use an array of tools, such as 3D printers, laser cutters and sewing machines. Root Access was awarded $12,682 in 2025.

At the Dec. 2 session, Alicia Rodriguez, chair and co-founder of the LAByrinth Art Collective, attended as a successful applicant. LAByrinth was awarded $89,430 in 2025. Rodriguez told The Munro Review that she most wants improvements in access/equity and transparency. “We have a very diverse and rich cultural and artistic demographic. I grew up in southeast Fresno. I know it exists,” she said. “But if that’s not represented in the pool of grantees, then there is a gap.”

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Johannus Reijnders attended the Dec. 2 session as an unsuccessful applicant. He applied for $41,855 to launch a writing workshop/skill sharing program to teach technical writing and public engagement to artists. Reijnders said transparency is his top priority: “It means the world to me that we’re having this conversation. Talk is the first thing. So now, I want to see our suggestions incorporated” in the 2026 grants process.

One reform he wants enacted: Opening to the public the meetings where scoring panelists discussed grant applications. The Fresno Arts Council allowed only applicants – not the public – to attend in 2025, and, it’s unclear whether such meetings will continue in 2026 because it’s not a standard practice in other cities, according to Reijnders.

“Very respectfully and passionately, I could not care less [if having open meetings is] different. This is Fresno. We are different.” Reijnders has said in the past that open meetings would allow the public – including future grant applicants – to “observe and learn and get excited” about Measure P.

Meanwhile, Ellis Pracy took advantage of the Dec. 2 session to address how some in the emerging arts community perceive the Art Museum – and, perhaps by extension, other legacy organizations. She invited people at the brainstorming session to visit the Art Museum, which has free admission on the first and third Sundays of every month.

“The Fresno Art Museum is this community’s museum and always has been for the last 76 years,” she later told The Munro Review. For example, 10,000 third-graders from Fresno and Sanger visit the Art Museum every school year. “We are not an elitist organization, supported primarily by people from wealthy Fresno neighborhoods,” Ellis Pracy said.

With local membership of 2,5000 – out of 700,000 people in metropolitan Fresno-Clovis – the museum receives an average membership donation of $65 per year. Those donations, plus entry fees ($10), grants (like Measure P) and fundraising are needed to meet monthly operating expenses of $100,000, Ellis Pracy said.

“I was pleased to see organizational leaders at the [Dec. 2 brainstorming] meeting who have voiced a prejudice against legacy Fresno culture and art institutions,” Ellis Pracy said. “I could tell by their comments shared at City Hall meetings that they had probably never visited the Fresno Art Museum.”

She added she was happy that people who have seemed critical of the Art Museum in the past seemed open at the Dec. 2 meeting to accepting her invitation.

(Fresno voters approved Measure P in 2018. It is a 30-year, ⅜ of a cent increase to the city’s sales tax to benefit parks and arts. Parks received 88% of the millions of dollars that the initiative generates, and arts receive the other 12%.)