Arts Quincy secures $73K in grant money to fund student field trips in 2025

QUINCY — In the third grade, Laura Sievert-Hesseltine attended the Quincy Symphony Orchestra’s Young People’s Concert, a free concert that 3,000 students from 10 counties continue to attend to this day. It inspired her to pick up the violin.

Sievert-Hesseltine is now the executive director of Arts Quincy, also known as the Quincy Society of Fine Arts, a nonprofit organization that is “dedicated to enriching the cultural vibrancy of our community by championing the fine arts.” 

“If you look back, my whole life and career trajectory was changed by that one performance,” Sievert-Hesseltine said in an email.

In a recent news release, the organization announced it had secured more than $70,000 in grant money to fund art-related field trips — much like the field trip that ended up significantly impacting Sievert-Hesseltine — for all Adams County public, private and parochial school children in grades K-5 throughout the spring 2025 semester, as well as an all-school performance to be held at Quincy Junior High School. 

Locations will be announced in January. Past years have included field trips to the Quincy Children’s Museum, Quincy Public Library, Quincy Community Theatre, Quincy Art Center, the Gov. John Wood Mansion, the History Museum on the Square, Quincy Museum and several local dance studios.

According to the news release, $40,000 was secured from the Illinois Arts Council’s Regional Art Partners grant, and $33,500 was secured in operating support through the IAC’s Local Arts Network. In addition to field trips, the money will fund classroom art activities, free and reduced-cost family art activities and provide support to local nonprofits for free art programs at various festivals and community events.

This comes after Arts Quincy received $25,000 from the City of Quincy’s Economic Growth Fund in September. 

“When we were trusted with city support, we were asked to show tax payers value for their investment,” Sievert-Hesseltine said in the release. “We’ve returned the city’s $25,000 investment more than five-fold already by securing additional dollars to be used across the schools, the riverfront and public projects. We hope stakeholders can see what a value-added proposition this is.”

In January, the organization secured a highly competitive $50,000 state grant to fund an engineering study of a riverfront amphitheater at Clat Adams Park. Another $10,000 in federal funding was secured for regional arts and culture marketing endeavors. 

With the $25,000 received from the city in September, Sievert-Hesseltine said she hired the necessary staff to find and apply for even more grant money that could be circulated back into the local economy. Less than three months later, the organization has secured another $73,500.

“When the city invests in its arts council, its return is a staff working hard to bring dollars in that benefit the city, our institutions and our kids,” Sievert-Hesseltine said.

She said that with the help of their latest grants, every kindergartener through fifth grader in Adams County and each QJHS student will be directly impacted by Arts Quincy. Immersive exposure to arts and culture has the potential to impact children.

“We certainly don’t believe that every kid who participates in an arts field trip will become an artist, but we hope that it’s a spark of creativity that they can always lean on,” she said. “Of course, arts activities do give non-athletic kids outlets, but what’s great is that athletic kids find homes in the arts as well.”

Sievert-Hesseltine mentioned that when her husband was in high school, not only was he a lineman for the football team but also a drum major in the marching band. He’s no longer a lineman — he is now, in fact, an aerospace engineer — but the musical side he fostered in his adolescence remains.

“That’s the beauty of the arts,” Sievert-Hesseltine said. “They’re there for everyone to enjoy their entire lives.”