Scratch, win – and help the R.I. arts community

Maybe you like to support the arts. Or maybe you just like to try your luck with the lottery. Through the end of the year, a special lottery created to benefit the R.I. State Council on the Arts initiative allows you to do both at once.
The arts lottery, with $1 tickets and prizes of up to $500, was launched Oct. 1, and about 100,000 scratch-off tickets have been sold so far, said Lisa Carnevale, director of Rhode Island Citizens for the Arts, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbied for the arts lottery this legislative season.
The lottery tickets are considered a “big win” for the arts council, especially because the council hasn’t received an increase in state funding in a few years due to the state’s budget woes, Carnevale said.
All proceeds from ticket sales will go to RISCA, and the money generated will have a special use, said Peter Bramante, a member of Rhode Island Citizens for the Arts and director of the Arts & Business Council of Rhode Island.
“It will go to initiatives that otherwise couldn’t happen,” he said.
Once the initiatives are in place, the council will measure the impact of those initiatives so that the arts advocacy group will have a case to build on in showing the public the value of the arts to the economy and way of life in the state, he said.
Guidelines for the initiatives are that they must impact the community in a quantifiable way and be sustainable, Carnevale said. Although the lottery money is a one-time support, the council would like to be able to continue the initiatives by attracting additional funding for them.
Randy Rosenbaum, executive director of RISCA, said he hopes to know exactly how much money the lottery has generated and what specific programs the money will fund when RISCA’s board of directors meets mid-December.
“We’re really grateful to the General Assembly for giving us this opportunity,” Rosenbaum said, adding that the scratch-off tickets not only will raise much-needed resources, but also raise the visibility of RISCA among people who might not regularly attend theaters and art galleries.
The tickets are available at the ArtTix Visitor’s Center at 10 Dorrance St. in downtown Providence and anywhere state lottery tickets are sold, but also at various arts and cultural venues such as the Perishable Theatre downtown.
The latter part of the initiative was made possible by Bank Rhode Island, which acted as the broker so the tickets could be sold to audiences of plays and shows.
In addition, BankRI waived a fee so that the arts organizations don’t have added costs associated with selling the tickets, Bramante said.
Another special aspect of the tickets is that people can enter their losing tickets into a second-chance lottery for which arts organizations have donated free tickets to events, T-shirts and other prizes.
The lottery ticket legislation, which passed in the last hours of the 2007 legislative session, was spearheaded by state Sen. Maryellen Goodwin and state Rep. John J. McCauley Jr., both Providence Democrats. It was passed in recognition of RISCA’s 40th anniversary.
“This was an opportunity to give us a bit of a boost,” Carnevale said. “And it’s really nice because it’s an opportunity to increase sales in the lottery by people who don’t normally buy lottery tickets.” •