The Shadow
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice is sending out grant funding to fairs and festivals across West Virginia.
Justice has announced the awarding of 64 additional grants, worth $1,144,010 from the Governor’s Contingency Fund, to help various organizations that host fairs, festivals, or similar events.
Justice said the money will help bridge the gap in a year when events were forced to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was reported to me that many of our fairs and festivals were on the ropes,” Justice said. “The people that are putting on our fairs and festivals are doing this because of their love for our state and our communities. But they’re not flush with extra dollars and, at the end of the day, when something happens like what happened, where we had to stop our fairs and festivals, it put us in jeopardy of losing many of them altogether,” the governor said.
It was the second grant funding announcement for fairs and festivals in as many weeks.
Justice awarded more than $1.5 million last week to 330 fairs and festivals across the state.
According to Justice’s office, 52 grants, worth a combined amount of $451,790, were awarded to organizations that normally receive funding for their fairs and festivals through Preservation WV Grants.
Ten grants, worth a combined amount of $688,220, were awarded to individual arts line items that were included in the Fiscal Year 2021 budget. And two grants, worth a combined amount of $4,000, were awarded to a pair of additional festivals in Bluefield.
