By HENRY COLT
Sentinel Staff Writer
For the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, Christmas came a month early in the form of a $115,180 grant from the London-based Sigrid Rausing Trust.
“It’s our first international grant, so we’re incredibly excited about it,” Sitka Fine Arts Camp Director Roger Schmidt told the Sentinel Monday. “It means that we now have international recognition for the work we do.”
The trust is named after its founder, Sigrid Rausing, a Swedish writer and anthropologist who publishes the popular British literary magazine Granta.
But the grant’s foreign origin is not its only unusual feature.
The Sigrid Rausing Trust does not accept unsolicited applications, but instead “proactively identifies” its recipients — community organizations in countries around the world — from afar. This meant that when Schmidt received an email from the trust in August inviting the Fine Arts Camp to apply for the grant, it came as a complete surprise.
Another surprise to Schmidt was the fluctuation in monetary exchange rates between August and November.
“This was our first time working with an organization where submitting our financial reports meant converting everything to pounds,” said Schmidt. “We waited with bated breath as the exchange rate (between the dollar and the pound) went up and down.”
Emma Burck, director of student life at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, and Sitka Fine Arts Camp Executive Director Roger Schmidt get in the holiday spirit at the camp office this afternoon. (Sentinel Photo)
Schmidt described the final figure of 90,000 British pounds, equaling 115,180 U.S. dollars, as “fantastic.”
The Sigrid Rausing Trust believes that “donors can best encourage innovation and imagination if they allow grantees to develop their own ideas.” This means that the Fine Arts Camp can use the money however it wants, which Schmidt said is a rare opportunity.
Asked how the Fine Arts Camp plans to take advantage of that opportunity, Schmidt had a quick answer: “We’re absolutely certain what we’re going to do with it. We’ve chosen to use it for issues of access to the camp — in other words, to allow us to grow our financial aid program and provide support for kids coming from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.”
In the past month, the Fine Arts Camp already has begun using the grant money to award scholarships and travel stipends to Alaskan students from such backgrounds, its own way of spreading holiday cheer.
