The Arts Alliance, Washtenaw County's arts-support group, has received a grant of $68,500 from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan to help grown the area's creative economy. The foundation is the same group that organized the Arts and Culture Challenge earlier this year.

The full press release from the Arts Alliance:

"The Arts Alliance has received a $68,500 grant from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan on September 9, 2009 to help support nurturing the growth of the creative economy in Washtenaw County through marketing and business training skills. "These funds will be usedto implement two priority recommendations of the Washtenaw County Cultural Master Plan, completed by the Arts Alliance in October 2008. These two recommendations include: 1) developing a county-wide cultural web portal to serve as the 'go-to' site for all things arts and cultural in Washtenaw County, and 2) offering business skills training to enable artists to successfully market and sell their product. "'We are delighted to have received this grant,' said Tamara Real, Arts Alliance president. 'Both of these initiatives are designed to help the region's creative sector become more financially successful and in turn, will help contribute to the economic revitalization of the county. These funds will help strengthen our region's arts and cultural sector.' "This grant will be used to complete the building of the web portal, - www.a3arts.org (Ann Arbor Area arts) - training area arts and cultural organizations and artists on how to use the portal, as well as marketing the portal to the public. Funds will also be used to test one system of delivering business skills training to artists (the Arts Meets Business model developed by the Chelsea Center for the Arts)."