Mayor Ruthanne Fuller, the Newton Cultural Council and other attendees gathered Tuesday night at the War Memorial Auditorium in Newton City Hall to celebrate recipients of the Council’s 2025 art grants.

The night featured performances by Kemp Harris from the Music Monday program at the Scandinavian Center, and The Highland Glee Club, conducted by Sarah Seeber. There were speeches by Mayor Fuller, Anne Marie Stein, the Chair of the Newton Cultural Council, and David Slatery, the deputy executive director of the Mass Cultural Council.

“I’ll just say it takes a village to persist,” Fuller said, looking around the room.

The Mass Cultural Council has given annual grant money to the Newton Cultural Council for over 20 years to promote cultural education in the community. Every municipality in Massachusetts has a cultural council that accepts annual grant applications from art nonprofits in its area.

This year, the Newton Cultural Council awarded over $60,000 to 51 of the 80 organizations that applied for a grant. The Council is accepting applications until October 16 for 2026 grants.

“It’s just a way to bring the arts community together and to honor the richness of the arts here in Newton,” said Cheryl Weber, a member of the Council.

The funded programs can range from music festivals to after-school arts programs for children, encompassing visual, auditory and other arts.

“We also will be honoring Mayor Fuller because this is her last year, and she was the mayor who actually instituted giving a matching grant to the arts council,” said Glenda Fishman, treasurer.

When Fuller was reelected in 2021, one of her first decisions in office was to match the $27,900 given to Newton by the Mass Cultural Council, effectively doubling their budget for local artists.

Fishman joined the Council during the pandemic, after a recommendation by Mayor Fuller, and has now served for six years.

“I just want to make sure that people are aware of the breadth of offerings that we help to fund and that people will see all of those as treasures for this community,” said Fishman.

This year, this grant supported the BIPOC Curatorial Program at the New Art Center in Newton, which funded two exhibitions showcasing the work of 30 different artists, aiming to support diversity and equity in the community.

“We all have the common connection that we think supporting the arts, creating art and celebrating art brings people together,” said Emily O’Neil, executive director of the New Art Center in Newton.

The Boston Yue Opera House, another 2025 grantee, is a volunteer-based nonprofit in Boston with performances by all-female casts. The grant money helped them to afford their costumes and venues, and conduct their annual gala.

“We are using arts to reach across the aisle, across culture, and across language. There’s a lot of people with a language barrier. So for all of our performances, we keep using captions in bilingual, so that way people can easily understand it. The funding helps us to do all of this,” said Emilie Ying, the founder and director of Boston Yue Opera House.