The Georgetown Arts and Culture Board is looking to produce a program that creates a partnership between the Georgetown Arts and Culture Program and the Georgetown Rotary Club’s Field of Honor project in November 2020 to introduce a healing arts component into the Field of Honor project.

The board was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to apply for a $10,000 Arts Engagement in American Communities Grant, Library Director Eric Lashley said to Georgetown City Council members at the Jan. 14 meeting. He said the NEA does research into communities across the nation that have not previously received NEA funding and are doing work in their communities to engage through the arts.

The proposed program would include a musical component called “storytelling through music,” consisting of adapting hand-written stories and poems by veterans into lyrics and set to music and performed by a vocalist and professional musicians from Austin Classical Guitar, Lashley said. A visual arts component would be “removing the mask” and feature artwork created by veterans through the Resilient Me art therapy program. It would feature mask-making and be exhibited at the City Hall Gallery and the Field of Honor.

A public art component would be a mural designed and implemented by a veteran artist. It would engage locals by involving community members to help paint, Lashley said, adding the mural would honor a military service dog and feature patriotic imagery that includes the Field of Honor.

City Council unanimously approved the arts and culture board’s request to submit the project to the National Endowment for the Arts for a $10,000 grant and to submit it to the Texas Commission on the Arts for an additional $10,000 grant.