Lantern Festival Tooele, Utah

Our mission is to cultivate vibrant, Inclusive communities throughout Utah
where residents thrive and have pride in their hometowns.

Love Where You Live

People are drawn to places by a desire to engage in communities with authentic character. Successful towns across Utah have made strategic investments in their cultural distinctiveness to inspire and connect with their citizens so they enjoy spending time and prosper in their communities.

Committing to infrastructure strategies that embed arts and culture is the key to achieving vibrancy and bringing life and emotion to your community.

We want to help you better leveraging the special gems that give character to your hometown, define what success means to your community, and be driven by your community's unique values and authenticity. We at the Department Heritage & Arts are calling this initiative Creative Communities.

Civic goals By Way Of arts and heritage

It is clear that there’s a pattern between a community's success and the role that culture plays in individual lives. Resources are becoming available that Heritage & Arts can leverage to measure culture's positive effects and the true impact on quality of life.

In addition to measuring cultural health, Heritage & Arts is also a resource hub for your towns. Through our many strong private and agency partnerships, your community can tap our knowledge to identify the best ways to fill the gaps in your host of offerings and identify the best return on your investment.

“Increasingly, research demonstrates that arts, culture, museums, libraries and the like are not ‘nice to have’ in local communities, they are the very amenities talented individuals seek out, and therefore companies look for as they decide where to locate and where to expand.”

Theresa Foxley
President and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah



Filling in the Gaps

Heritage & Arts offers a huge range of grants to help you fund your historical, arts, or humanitarian efforts across all our divisions. In fact, an entire third of our funding goes directly into supporting Utah's cultural infrastructure.  

If we don't offer the support you need, we are happy to identify the funding entity that can help.

Download the complete Heritage & Arts grants list.