By Hailey Stangebye

The Greater Columbus Arts Council’s 35th annual Community Arts Partnership Awards — or CAP Awards — are just around the corner, on Oct. 18. This is more than a luncheon; it’s an opportunity to honor the individuals and entities that allow the arts to flourish in central Ohio.

Better yet, this year’s luncheon is inspired by the Harlem Renaissance celebration.

“People should not come expecting your traditional talking heads and boring awards luncheon. We’re going to make it a lot of fun. It’s going to be a journey from Columbus to Harlem and back,” Jami Goldstein, vice president of marketing, communication and events for GCAC, says. “People will get to see performances, spoken word poetry and music. We couldn’t be more delighted about giving our community a really fun look at an important historical, social and cultural movement.”

“People will get to see performances, spoken word poetry and music. We couldn’t be more delighted about giving our community a really fun look at an important historical, social and cultural movement.”

As a part of the ceremony, GCAC will honor three individuals and three businesses for their outstanding support for the arts in the greater Columbus community. For the individual categories, GCAC recognizes an arts educator, an emerging arts leader and an arts partner. For the business awards, they recognize a small, medium and large employer.

The diverse range of awards represent the wide scope of Columbus-based movers and shakers that help the arts to grow.

“I think it takes a lot to make the arts flourish in a community,” Goldstein says. “Those community contributions are critical to having a vibrant arts scene. That includes financial support, non-cash contributions, volunteer involvement, board participation, on-going work every day — whether it’s with kids, or within the community to build partnerships. These kinds of strong partnerships between businesses and community members in the arts help stimulate economic growth, promote the city’s revitalization and encourage tourism, all of those things that we know the arts do every day.”

The past year has been particularly transformative for the Columbus arts community thanks to the I, Too, Sing America: Harlem Renaissance at 100 campaign. This year’s CAP Awards will reflect this city-wide effort to engage and embrace our local, black artists.

“We really hope people go away from the Community Arts Partnership Awards with a sense of inspiration, energy and excitement about what’s happening and the things that people are doing in the arts community,” Goldstein says. “As far as the Harlem Renaissance, we hope that this is just the beginning. This has been a year-long celebration that will continue into almost March of 2019. But this is just the start of us engaging our Columbus, black artists more to make sure that their voices are heard and that their art is seen in more places.”

“As far as the Harlem Renaissance, we hope that this is just the beginning. This has been a year-long celebration that will continue into almost March of 2019. But this is just the start of us engaging our Columbus, black artists more to make sure that their voices are heard and that their art is seen in more places.”

For more information, or to reserve your spot at the CAP Awards, visit gcac.org. Ticket sales close Wednesday, Oct. 10, so claim your table soon!

This year’s awards are made possible through the generosity of the presenting sponsor, PNC.

Nannette Maciejunes, executive director of the Columbus Museum of Art, and Tripp Fontane, the spoken-word poet, represented the Harlem Renaissance campaign on Good Morning Columbus for their show on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018.

This feature is a small taste of the wealth of experiences and moments we’ve created — and continue to create — to celebrate the anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance. In the coming weeks, we’ll release the stories of each artist who traveled from Columbus to Harlem, including the story of Tripp Fontane.