The Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC), a partner of Simply Living, is a 501(c)(3) organization officially incorporated in 1973 to support, promote, and advocate for the arts in Columbus and Franklin County. With offices at 182 East Long Street, Columbus, it serves as the arts agency for the city. It provides grants, manages community arts initiatives, and offers resources for artists and cultural organizations.
Its mission is to champion and elevate the arts, ensuring broad public access and supporting local artists and organizations. Its vision: power of art realized, people engaged, city energized. While functioning as a private nonprofit organization, its funding relies on public money, specifically city hotel/motel bed taxes and admission taxes, alongside private contributions.
Supporting Artists and Arts Organizations
The GCAC supports artists & arts organizations through a spectrum of grant programs, workshops, networking events & services. It also shares a host of resources, including calls for artists, job opportunities, nonprofit board openings, and listings of spaces for rent. It provides marketing services through the Columbus Makes Art event calendar, the Artist Directory, and the Public Art database.
It also produces the annual Big Arts Night, recognizing business & individual contributions to the community, and the Columbus Art Festival, the city’s welcome-to-summer event that takes place each June.
The GCAC programming provides access to the arts for people of all cultural backgrounds, economic status, sexual orientation, age and physical ability and ensures broad public access to the arts. Supporting Columbus artists, and arts and culture organizations enhances the cultural image of the Greater Columbus area.
Subscribe to the GCAC Newsletters to stay up-to-date on GCAC grant deadlines, workshops, and events. And consider donating to support the Arts in central Ohio.
Greater Columbus Film Commission
The Greater Columbus Film Commission (Film Columbus) is a division of the GCAC that aims to grow the film industry in Columbus and central Ohio by creating jobs and providing significant economic impact for the area. It strives to build Columbus as a top city for film education, exhibition, and production by supporting filmmakers and the film industry through a range of services, including the only local incentive in Ohio as well as grants & resources to encourage film and media projects in our city.
History of the GCAC
In 1960, an organization known as the Columbus Arts Council was formed by the Downtown Action Committee and the Columbus Junior League, for the purposes of creating a community arts calendar and producing a downtown Summer Arts Festival.
The first community calendar was printed in the fall of 1961. The first Arts Festival was held in 1962 on the statehouse lawn. Within a few years, although the Arts Festival continued, the Columbus Arts Council became inactive.
During that time, the City of Columbus financially supported the community’s three major arts institutions, The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (Columbus Museum of Art), the Center of Science & Industry (COSI), and the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, in return for specific public service events. In 1973, City Council recognized that the Columbus arts community extended beyond these three organizations and that the needs of the three institutions extended beyond the small sums allocated. Greater Columbus Arts Council was officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1973.
Today, hundreds of arts organizations and individual artists share millions of dollars in city and county support. While this represents a small percentage of operating budgets, it reaffirms continuing bipartisan support for the arts and the role they play in civic development. From support for professional artists to operating & project support for organizations, these funds provide the financial bedrock from which our community pursues its creative goals.
