Talbot Arts, aka the Talbot County Arts Council, has had some real challenges since it officially rebranded itself a few years ago. Shortly after the unveiling of “Talbot Arts”, the public arts agency was seriously disrupted, like its art grantees, with the arrival and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. For more that two years,  art, whether it be formed, created, or taught, took a back seat as a international health crisis forced the hibernation of artists, musicians, writers, dancers and art students.

Things have clearly improved since those dark days.  Those sleeping arts organizations did finally reawaken with full schedules of performances, classes, and commissions over the last year. And Talbot Arts has gone back to being a central funder and important resource for those initial programs, including its impactful scholarships for students.

A few weeks ago, the Spy asked Talbot Arts’s director Joan Levy, and newly-elected Board Chair and friend Amy Stewart to stop by the Spy studio to talk about their plans for 2023, including public art, the distribution of a one-time arts grant to Talbot County from the State of Maryland’s Arts Relief Fund, and  begins with scholarship funding, which Amy notes had a profound impact on her own children.

This video is approximately minutes in length. For more information about Talbot Arts please go here.

Update: The Maryland State Arts Council noted in the interview has extended the deadline for submitting grants to their public art planning and public art implementation grants to April 14.  For more information please go here.

For many private foundations, making grants to a conduit organization which then re-grants those funds to other organizations is not a popular option. Most of these institutions have dedicated staff or volunteer leaders to identify grantees. And so it was interesting to note when reviewing the current awards made by the Women & Girls Fund over the last year that the Talbot Community Connections (TCC) was on the list. By design, they were established to specifically support the Talbot County Children Advocacy Center to help victims of sexual abuse.

But it should be no surprise that the Women & Girls Fund, given their mission, would be one of the TCC’s earliest donors. By supporting this special division of the Talbot County Department of Social Services, the WGF knows that their grants go to critical therapeutic resources for these victims such as self-defense classes, equine therapy, music therapy, art therapy, and trauma-informed yoga that the County cannot fund itself.

In the Spy’s ongoing series celebrating 20 years of grantmaking by the Women & Girls Fund, we talked with Jennifer Wright , co-president of Talbot Community Connections and WGF president Karen Kaludis about this important partnership.

This video is approximately four minutes in length. This video is approximately 6 minutes in length. For information about Talbot Community Connections please go here.  For the Women & Girls Fund please go here.

For generations, going to the nurse’s office at the local elementary school was a simple concept. It was where children received their daily medications or complained of stomach aches. And if the child had severe conditions, their parents were asked to take them home or the family doctor.

But thanks to partnerships with Choptank Community Health System, those school health offices are increasingly becoming urgent care centers similar to those found in local shopping centers on the Mid-Shore. Staffed by licensed, advanced practice clinicians, these nurse’s offices have started to function like a typical doctor’s office, with medical providers assessing and diagnosing illness, writing prescriptions, performing lab tests—including strep and COVID—and performing physicals, including for school sports.

The Spy was so intrigued that we ventured out to White Marsh Elementary School in Trappe to learn more from Choptank’s CEO, Sara Rich, health provider Kim Fitzgerald NP, her assistant Jennifer Insley, and White Marsh’s principal, Kim Seidel, to learn more.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about Choptank’s school-based programs please go here.