Nickelodeon Theatre Recognized in Creative Placemaking and Receives $350,000 Grant from Ford Foundation
July 12, 2013
COLUMBIA, SC – July 12, 2013 – The Nickelodeon Theatre, South Carolina’s only non-profit art house film theater, was recently featured at the Ford Foundation’s New York City headquarters as part of “Valuing Artists Seeding Innovation: Celebrating 10 Years of Leveraging Investments in Creativity,” honoring creative placemaking over the last 10 years. In 2011, the Nickelodeon Theatre was awarded a $50,000 Space for Change Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) grant, which partially enabled the Nickelodeon to renovate and relocate to its state-of-the-art theater and new home at 1607 Main Street.
Earlier this year a production crew documented the Nickelodeon’s success and the impact the Nick, as an artistic organization, has had on downtown Columbia in its new space. The final video was shown to attendees at the Ford Foundation’s headquarters in celebration of the work that LINC has done nationwide in the last decade. The Nickelodeon Theatre was one of four past LINC artists, arts organizations or philanthropies, featured in short films documenting their progress and mentioned as models of success.
Additionally, the Nickelodeon Theatre was recently awarded a $350,000 grant by the Ford Foundation as part of the foundation’s Supporting Diverse Arts Space initiative.
“The LINC grant, along with earlier significant grants from the Ford Foundation and Nord Family Foundation came at a critical time. They allowed us to complete the first phase of our Move the Nick capital campaign and finally move to our new theater in August of 2012,” said Andy Smith, executive director of the Nickelodeon Theatre. “We were honored to receive funding from such esteemed organizations, and especially excited that the Ford Foundation has elected to support us again. We’re happy to report that LINC and the Ford Foundation believe they’ve seen significant returns on their investment. Our Nickelodeon family should be proud that we’re gaining national attention.”
LINC originally made the decision to provide funding for the Nickelodeon Theatre because it recognized the potential of the theater’s new space and its role in revitalizing Main Street and serve our community through media education programs.
Since the Nickelodeon’s move last year, the organization has sold over 27,000 tickets to moviegoers and hosted the theater’s seventh annual Indie Grits Festival, where 25 percent of the festival’s attendees reside outside of Columbia bringing attention and revenue to other Main Street and downtown Columbia businesses.
For more information on the Nickelodeon Theatre, visit: www.nickelodeon.org. Follow the Nickelodeon at http://www.twitter.com/NickTheatre and on Facebook.
