2025 IMPACT

2025 has been a milestone year for the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and our region’s arts and culture scene. As we look back on all the meaningful moments that made this such a momentous year, we celebrate how essential the arts are to making St. Louis an outstanding place to live, work, and visit.

Throughout the last 40 years, RAC has distributed over 7,500 grants totaling $120 million – and we’re just getting started. Here’s to the next 40 years of impactful investments, meaningful leadership, and amplifying arts and culture as a vital resource for St. Louis.

STAY INFORMED & GET INVOLVED
Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter and join the movement to make St. Louis’ arts & culture scene shine for the next 40 years.

Since 1985, RAC has been at the center of shaping and supporting our incredible arts and culture scene. During the four decades as the region’s largest public investor, the impact has been transformative and elevated St. Louis and beyond.
 
From shining a spotlight on the importance of the arts through extensive storytelling to commissioning a special mural to throwing the most memorable birthday bash ever, we celebrated side by side and honored 40 years of creating together, welcoming visitors, and fostering change.  

Commemorating this moment, we released a special documentary, 40 Years of Creating Together, which centers the voices and work of St. Louis creatives who have done so much to uplift the quality of life in our region.

On August 28 at Union Station, we had the honor of hosting an unforgettable night celebrating St. Louis’ creativity. Relive the joy, smiles, and creative energy through the 40th Birthday Bash recap video.

We sat down with our passionate, committed board of commissioners, representing a wealth of experience in business leadership and arts advocacy, to discuss how arts and culture continue to drive the St. Louis region forward.

Every year, RAC receives four-fifteenths of the hotel/motel room tax revenue earned in St. Louis City and St. Louis County and invests the vast majority of those dollars back into the region in the form of grants to non-profits and creatives that elevate St. Louis’ economy and identity through our world-class arts scene.

This year brought two major, unforeseen challenges – the rescission of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant funding and the devastating May tornado. We moved quickly to respond, putting in place a board-designated fund resulting in the Crisis Response Grants. This funding provided interim financial assistance to established grantees to help fortify St. Louis’ arts and culture ecosystem, helping to ensure a vibrant arts scene for generations to come. 

After receiving $10.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding from the City of St. Louis as a result of the passage of Board Bill #66 in October 2022, this vital, RAC-facilitated ARPA for the Arts work continued into this year and resulted in additional high-profile and impactful projects. 

The Tourism Recovery Grants provided in 2024 were a one-time grant to non-profit arts & culture organizations to aid in tourism and generate opportunities for increased engagement in local, regional, national, and international travel and hospitality by individuals and groups to the City of St. Louis. 
 
This vital work continued throughout this year, showing up in ways that allowed for programming innovations and audience engagement while strengthening the core of arts non-profits in our region.  
 
See what organizations are included in this grantee cohort and watch the video below to hear directly from some of the top arts leaders in our region.

An initiative in support of the region’s growing film industry, we launched the St. Louis Film Project (STLFP), an exciting effort done in partnership with Continuity and funded through ARPA for the Arts. Five local, visionary filmmakers are bringing bold, original stories to life and enhancing St. Louis’ and Missouri’s reputation as a premier destination for exceptional filmmakers and storytellers. 
 
Learn more about each film and stay tuned for details on a special STLFP event showcasing these incredible projects in March 2026. 

Last year, the St. Louis Mural Project transformed St. Louis by placing 28 murals across the city – two in each of the 14 wards. This visionary initiative and historic investment in public art embraced collaboration, beautification, and support for local artists. This year, we commissioned two additional murals. 

To celebrate RAC’s 40th anniversary and highlight the importance of art and community, RAC invited two of St. Louis’s most prolific muralists, Cbabi Bayoc and Robert Fishbone, to create a special mural commemorating RAC’s work over the last four decades. 

Location: 5654 Delmar Blvd. (63112)

The Requiem of Light mural was created as a permanent representation of the civic arts project honoring the thousands of St. Louisans who lost their lives to COVID-19. Brought to life by artist Fatou Kane, the mural reflects the project’s central vision: that the light of those lost continues to illuminate the grief, love, and hope of those who remain.

Location: 2209 Olive St. (63103)

Our location at City Foundry, made possible by ARPA for the Arts, continues to serve as a place of gathering and connection. Bringing St. Louis’ creative community together to share ideas, resources, and simply hold space for each other is at the core of RAC’s work. From grants workshops to grantee-hosted events to Snacks with RAC gatherings on the last Wednesday of the month, here’s what we achieved together in 2025.

This year, we began a partnership with Culturalyst to offer a new resource to connect arts organizations and artists of all disciplines in St. Louis City and County to each other and the larger St. Louis community. Culturalyst: St. Louis supports networking, discovering opportunities, amplifying creative practices, and connecting with and hiring artists.  

We have big plans to expand the network in 2026, so be sure to create your artist or organization profile now and start getting connected. 

The CAT institute provides a comprehensive training program, preparing artists and their community partners to collaborate in creating and sustaining transformative arts programs, often in under-resourced settings, such as neighborhood organizations, social service agencies, and as part of educational programs.  In 2025, we welcomed the 27th CAT cohort. The fellows grappled with program planning and adaptability, partnership development, and hands-on projects. These artists, cultural workers, community activists, educators, and social service professionals have been a driving force in the movement for positive social change in St. Louis.

Special thanks goes to Great Rivers Greenway, which went above and beyond in a new, innovative collaboration to help give the recent CAT cohort vital hands-on experience. They not only provided sites to take CAT team projects from the theoretical realm into the real world, but they served as eager, flexible partners throughout the process. From proactive idea generation to solutions-oriented approaches, Great Rivers Greenway and RAC exemplified what can be achieved through cross-sector cooperation.

This year, we once again brought Artist INC, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance, to our St. Louis community. Unlike other entrepreneur- and business-focused classes, Artist INC is tailored for the needs and challenges of working artists of any discipline. 
 
24 artists were selected through an application process and guided by a team of local artists who have been trained to lead and support others. During the eight-week program, artists worked together in small groups, took part in large group discussions, engaged in presentations, and received advice from artist mentors.

Continuing our work to fuel knowledge and meaningful solutions for our region through data-driven insights, RAC hosted the Arts Disciplines or Arts Industries Webinar, during which we presented new research over discipline-specific insights tailored to the needs of both artists and arts organizations. Topics included workforce estimates informed by RAC and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compensation estimates for artists and arts administrators, trends in consumer behavior of arts audiences and ROI among key industries comparing benchmark metrics to 2023 data.

In late March, RAC collaborated with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis on a convening focused on how the arts and creative thinking can play a role in civic participation and visioning at the local, regional, and national levels. Attendees heard from artists, advocates, and activists about the real impact that can be made at the ballot box and beyond. The evening included performances by Anita Jackson and Pacia Anderson, a panel discussion facilitated by social practice theater artist Kathryn Bentley with advocacy experts Kelly McGowan (Transform 314), Kyna Iman (Missouri Citizens for the Arts), and Randy Cohen (Americans for the Arts), and a comment and creative response wall for attendees to share their voice. The event provided a space to be in community and share how people can work together as artists, creatives, and culture lovers to create a better city and better region.

RAC partnered with 4 Hands to create a limited-edition Artist Can Series, hiring five local artists to design unique cans that were sold across St. Louis. RAC was also selected as a 2025 City Wide Partner, with a portion of all City Wide beer sales benefiting the arts in St. Louis.

RAC is a founding partner of Music at the Intersection and has supported this incredible festival for four years, helping create a welcoming, engaging, and fun environment and provides a special gathering for St. Louisans and out-of-town guests who are passionate about music, arts, and culture.

RAC was a proud presenter of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s celebration honoring St. Louis legend Chuck Berry. RAC has supported SLSO since our beginning in 1985, and helping present one of the first performances in the newly renovated Powell Hall was yet another meaningful milestone.

RAC received over 60 mentions in the media throughout 2025, including the following:

As RAC turns 40, president and CEO Vanessa Cooksey looks to the future – St. Louis Magazine  

40 years of helping shape St. Louis culture – The St. Louis American  

Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and 4 Hands Brewing Co. introduce new design for City Wide beer – Ladue News  

St. Louis area’s biggest public arts funder issues $3.7M in grants – St. Louis Business Journal  

Gateway Arch temporarily reopens to visitors during government shutdown – St. Louis Public Radio  

Amplifying the stories of creatives and arts and culture organizations, RAC promotes vibrant experiences that attract and retain people and elevate St. Louis’ identity as a great place to live, work, and visit. StLouisArts.org, RAC’s dedicated website for cultural tourism, has reached nearly 3 million users since it went live in spring of 2023, engaging over 30 target markets to showcase St. Louis’ world class arts scene. Each year we continue to strengthen the St. Louis Arts brand as a central hub for highlighting artists, arts organizations, venues and more in the St. Louis region. Stay tuned for some exciting updates in 2026 and beyond.