Getting to Yes: WXPN Wins New Grant
May 21, 2012
Over the coming year, WXPN (XPN) will bring Mississippi Blues music to Philadelphia. XPN received a grant of $135,130 from the Philadelphia Music Project, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, to support the year-long performance series.
XPN’s Mississippi Blues Project will include four live performances (including one at the Philadelphia Folk Festival) featuring eight Mississippi Blues artists, all making their Philadelphia debut. The station will also partner with the African American Museum to screen a new film on the Blues, will coordinate an event for children, and will leverage all of its media platforms to extend the reach of the music.
While the Blues Project is, in many ways, a natural fit for XPN – which also produces World Café with David Dye and the long-running broadcast, The Blues Show – the grant took multiple years of conversation to come to fruition.
“We had not previously been funded [by the Pew Charitable Trusts] for a few reasons – and it was really important to identify those reasons,” says General Manager Roger LaMay. For one, the Trusts were initially unwilling to support XPN because it is licensed to the University of Pennsylvania, and they were already supporting the University. “We had numerous discussions with them about this. We said that arts organizations under a university umbrella that function independently should be eligible for grants. We were very proactive about getting this changed,” LaMay says. The Trusts agreed to review their policy and, in the end, changed it.
Another obstacle was the criteria of the Philadelphia Music Project itself, which focused heavily on performance. “We’re involved in a whole bunch of performances, but we’re first and foremost a broadcaster,” says LaMay. Ultimately, the Music Project broadened its definitions in part because of its own growing interest in finding ways for the funded performances to have a wider life.
The whole process of conversation between XPN and the Trusts took place over five or six years, LaMay recalls. The station had to identify its priorities and look for overlap with the Trusts’ interests and priorities. At the same time, he adds, as station leaders got to know foundation staff members, “we needed to learn more about their process and how we could get from here to there.”
It’s essential to take the long view and to be proactive, LaMay concludes. “We didn’t just say, ‘Oh, they don’t fund things like this.’ Instead, we said, ‘We’re doing great stuff that matches with your priorities. How can we make this work?’ It’s really just about having a discussion over a period of years to look for common ground.”
Learn more about WXPN’s experience and other stations’ grantseeking successes at the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference (PMDMC) this July.
