A total of $42,000 in grants have been awarded to a couple of Swift Current based organizations.

The announcement was made a few weeks ago by the Saskatchewan Arts Board awarding grants to the Swift Current Museum and the Cultural Festivals.

The Cultural Festivals organization which includes the Windscape Kite Festival, Long Day's Night Music Festival and the Blenders series was awarded $33,000 for SaskFestivals Multi-Year grant "to support programming and operations for 2018."

Saskatchewan Arts Board CEO Michael Jones noted that Cultural Festivals has received grants from them for a number of years, and also said it was a no-brainer to continue to fund the organization.

"Festivals in communities just as a general thing are so important because festivals provide so many opportunities for everyone to participate in activities in some of the excitement in life we have going on," he said. "Often a lot of the festivals have no cost (for attendees or participants) and that's why it's important for us to support festivals."

The second grant is the 'Artists in Communities - Projects grant' worth $9,000 that was awarded to the museum to help build two Red River carts to promote and strengthen Métis perspectives, culture and traditions.

"I'm actually really pleased by the grant being awarded to the museum, because as far as I can tell it's the first grant that the Swift Current Museum has applied for from us," Jones said.

In total the Saskatchewan Arts Board handed out funding to nearly 130 individuals and organizations, totalling close to $1.6 million.

"One of the things that we have been really conscious is making sure that our funding impacts all of the communities in Saskatchewan or certainly as many as we can reach."