What is The Maine Cultural Affairs Council?
Maine’s Cultural Affairs Council (MCAC) is an alliance authorized by the state legislature of Maine’s seven statewide cultural agencies. Five of these agencies are public; two are private 501 (c) (3) organizations. They are the Maine Arts Commission, Maine Historical Society, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Maine Humanities Council, Maine State Archives, Maine State Library, and the Maine State Museum.
The MCAC membership includes the chair and vice-chair of the governing body of each agency and a chair who is appointed by the Governor. Ex-officio members include the agency directors and a liaison representative from the Office of the governor. The current chair of the MCAC is Deborah Smith, a former museum director, who lives in Bath.
Serving as a primary forum for interagency cooperation and planning, the MCAC has resulted in better communication and coordination of work among each of the participating agencies.
Its most notable accomplishment to date has been the development of the New Century Community Program, program of matching grants and direct technical assistance funded by the legislature and jointly administered through each of the sponsoring agencies. Since 1999 the New Century program has delivered, without reductions for administrative costs or overhead, more than $5.7 million dollars in matching for a variety of cultural projects, from building restoration to library development to family literacy programming. These grants have leveraged more than three times as many dollars in private & federal funds.
In 2002, the program received recognition from The Harvard-Kennedy School / Ford Foundation Innovations in American Government Awards program as one of the nation’s most innovative government programs.
