My webpage redesign is finally complete, and I LOVE it!

As promised, I am typing up a summary of how I obtained the grant funding to bring this about, so that other local artists (literary and otherwise) can follow suit and get their own webpages, search-engine-optimized and all.

On September 3, 2021, I submitted my online application for a Durham Arts Council’s Artist Support grant, which annually awards up to $1500/application for “professional and artistic development for emerging and established artists to enhance their skills and abilities to create work or improve their business operations and capacity to bring their work to new audiences.” As I wrote in the blog article I posted soon after being awarded the grant, I was reluctant to apply because I knew I wasn't their typical applicant (visual and performing arts). Nonetheless, I decided to apply for funds to hire a professional to redesign my website and blog (which were home-grown using discontinued Microsoft Frontpage ‘98!). It took me days to complete my application, in which I laid my thoughts bare in a way I hadn’t done in the past. This made me even more convinced that being awarded the money was a long shot.

Later my husband told me he thought I shouldn’t apply for grant funding, because I could spend as many hours doing scientific editing (my “day” job) and just pay for what I need for my creative writing career, myself. But, even if I didn’t get the grant, I knew the experience was worth it - completing the application forced me to think about my path forward and make the folks at the Durham Arts Council aware of it. Who knows what synergistic opportunities may await.

After delays due to the Covid Pandemic, the Artist Support Grant Review Panel met on February 16; their results were approved by the Durham Arts Council (DAC) board on February 23; and on February 24, I received an email from DAC’s Director of Artist Services congratulating me on being selected as a “North Carolina Arts Council Artist Support Grant Award Recipient”.

This forced me, after years of procrastination (and band-aiding my homemade website), to actually set about hiring someone who knows what they are doing to redesign my (admittedly weak) online presence. Despite this year’s incessant unsolicited email offers for web-design services from large companies like iPage, I had written in my grant application that I intended to hire a local (Durham-based) web-designer.

Before applying for the grant and after searching the Internet in vain for a Durham- or Triangle-based web-designer, I asked the Watts Hospital Hillandale list serve for recommendations, and two neighbors suggested I contact Rebekah Miel. Rebekah is the Creative Director of Miel Design Studio, a Durham-based company that provides graphic design, digital marketing, social media management, and brand strategy. She and the company sounded more than perfect, but even the first payment was more than the funds I might receive. Fortunately, Rebekah suggested I contact Natalie Nobles, another Durhamite who specializes in “user experience and visual design”. Though I emailed Natalie before submitting the grant, it wasn’t until I was awarded the funding that we confirmed she could do the work at that cost.

All of this is to say that finding a local, as opposed to corporate/Internet-based web designer was not easy. But using the funding awarded to me to pay another Durham local for the work was a double whammy I determinedly wanted to happen (and that I expect only benefited the review panel’s consideration of my grant application).

After several emails, I met with Natalie on April 27; and, together, we set up my SquareSpace account, so she could start transferring things from my old webpage and blog (which were on iPage) to the new ones. I paid her a $500 deposit to start work, after which we met twice in June and another two times in July to implement commerce and search-engine requirements and fine-tune everything so it appeared as we both wanted. By text, phone, and during the times we met in person, Natalie showed me how to update and maintain my webpage and made clear that, even after I had paid her the full $1500 agreed upon, she would be available for future questions or issues.

On July 24, Natalie and I had a website launch meeting. My eleven-year-old son joined us as we popped champagne (root beer for him) and shared cheese and crackers while performing final search-engine-optimization tasks. And I have been proudly sharing the site with friends and on social media ever since.

Now I have to submit my final report, which includes proof of my payment to the web designer, via a link provided by the Durham Arts Council. Easy Peasy.

The Director of Artist services has informed me that I cannot apply for another Artist Support grant for two years but that I can apply for an Emerging Artists grant for the same amount of funding. I am planning to apply for funding to attend a conference and participate in a pitch-fest to children’s book agents for my latest creation, One Proud Black Cat.

Thank you, Durham Arts Council. I had forgotten the enormous momentum I get when others validate my work, not just with words but with the funding required to make my plans take flight. Your support of local artists has been unwavering over the 20 years I have lived here, and it appears the organization is expanding not only in its outreach, but in its programs and associated funding.

For the last ten years, I have also been an artist in the DAC’s Creative Artists in the Public and Private Schools (CAPS) program. I offer three ~1-hour workshops, based on my children’s books and their themes of environmental science, chemistry, or the science of sound; and this year I started providing writing residencies by which students and I create a published book together, usually an anthology like The 20th Century Children’s Book Treasury (Shulman and Boughton). I find it no coincidence that the year of my new and improved website, I was hired to provide more summer workshops than any of the years before: 9 for DPS summer schools and 2 for Durham Parks and Rec. The Durham Arts Council’s CAPS program receives a percentage of the fees charged for my workshops, so the Artist Support funding I received is not only improving my outreach but that of the Durham Arts Council, itself. This is the kind of synergy I live for.

This year’s deadline for the DAC’s Artist Support Grant is August 19, 2022. The awarded funding will support projects from January 2023 – June 2023.

The deadline for the DAC’s Emerging Artists Grant is September 30, 2022, with information sessions on August 17 and September 7 (email mdemott@durhamarts.org for the link to register and get the meeting link).

For those of you who don’t live in North Carolina, I’m betting you have an Arts Council in your area. If you don’t, you should persistently contact your county commissioners and/or city council members about getting one ;-) .

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Below are the front pages of my old versus my new webpage. Note that the text appears much smaller than if you were to visit my webpage because of the dimensions required for the screenshots.

New Webpage (to click on links and see more, go to www.MelissaRooneyWriting.com):

Old Webpage: