Culture Vultures

Name: Angel Jones

Grant Applied For: Small Projects Program; city offers up to $1,000 “to make grant funds more accessible for small-scale arts projects”

Money Needed For: costs associated with producing Who Holds the Mic, an “upscale television show that exposes up and coming artists of all genres of music”

Artistic Statement in Acrostic Form:

Artists need a way to expose their talents

Rehersing [sic] night and day and refuse to remain silent

Touching on every aspect of their creative endevours [sic]

Intertwined with a gift that shall last forever

Struggling to overcome obstacles that remain in place

To see that day when success overshadows their face

I will not give up my dreams

Cause if I do, who else will believe?

Striving to become what they said I couldn’t

Tussling to remain focused cause they said I wouldn’t

Attention on ME as I take place center stage

Talented few, who will embrace the magazine cover page

Exposed because of one television show, who holds the

Mic. Inspires me to write

Entertainment lawyers, music directors, and A&R exec’s

Not to mention all of the exposure that I get

Thanks to one individual who did not let her dream SLIP.

Amount Asked For: $1,000

Status: denied

Upshot: Jones, who’s included her acrostic in two other District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities grant applications, has yet to be approved and hasn’t yet been able to produce her show. For that she seems frustrated. “I believe I did everything correctly,” she says.

—Mike Kanin