Tag Archives: grantmaking

Creative Capital Featured in the Wall Street Journal!

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lenticular wall from complex movements performance
Lentiucular Wall, from performance by 2013 grantee Complex Movements. Photo by Vanessa Miller.

We are thrilled to announce that Creative Capital is featured in today’s Wall Street Journal! The fantastic article, “Where Good Ideas Go to Live,” written by Steve Dollar, highlights a few our amazing 2013 grantees and offers insight into what makes our approach to working with artists so unique. If you’re a subscriber, you can read the full text on the WSJ’s website), and we’ve included an excerpt below:

When the downtown nonprofit Creative Capital announced on Thursday the recipients of its 2013 grants—$4.1 million to be divided among 46 projects in sums of up to $50,000, plus advisory services—the list highlighted many proposals that defy convention.

“You Are It”, by Williamsburg choreographer Arturo Vidich and machinist Daniel Wendlek, proposes a performance, inspired by the schoolyard game Tag, for 3,000 dancers and a human-powered hybrid electric airplane, staged on an abandoned runaway in Long Island.

St. Louis, Mo., artist Juan William Chávez’s “Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary” aims to transform the wooded site of a former housing project into a space for community beekeeping. Continue reading →

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Meet Our 2013 Grantees in Emerging Fields, Literature and Performing Arts!

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Top, left to right: Complex Movements, Nick Hallett & Shana Moulton, Jen Bervin, luciana achugar. Bottom, left to right: Laurie Jo Reynolds, Emily Johnson, Mondo Bizarro.

Today, Creative Capital announced our 2013 project grants in the categories of Emerging Fields, Literature and the Performing Arts, representing a total of 46 funded projects by 66 artists hailing from 17 states and Puerto Rico. The 2013 grantees were selected through an open-call, three-phase application process from a pool of more than 2,700 applicants. Creative Capital’s investment in each project includes up to $50,000 in direct financial support (disbursed at key points over the life of each project), plus more than $40,000 in advisory services, making our total 2013 investment more than $4,140,000.

Emerging Fields
Traditionally, Creative Capital’s Emerging Fields projects have centered on pushing the boundaries of technology. This year technology is embedded in most of the 17 funded projects, but is not the subject of the work. Instead, many are issue-focused, dealing with the environment, food, immigration, incarceration and urbanism, among others. Specifics include: a media artist who will build projectors from discarded e-waste; a public performance event planned and executed with a community in San Juan, Puerto Rico; a series of immersive dining experiences set in future worlds; and a multimedia exploration of state-sponsored human rights atrocities. Continue reading →

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PearlDamour: A Case Study of How Creative Capital Supports Artists

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PearlDamour, How to Build a Forest performance installation at The Kitchen in New York, 2011

PearlDamour, the Obie-award winning collaborative team of Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour, creates performance projects both inside and outside traditional theater spaces. This week, they are presenting their performative installation, How To Build A Forest, at Duke University’s Paige Auditorium (October 19-21). This truly unique project, created in collaboration with visual artist and costume designer Shawn Hall, is a durational interdisciplinary work—part visual art installation and part theater performance—in which an elaborate forest is built and dismantled over an eight-hour period. The work was inspired by the loss of 100 trees at D’Amour’s family home in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, and subsequently informed by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

PearlDamour received their Creative Capital grant in Performing Arts for How to Build A Forest in 2009, and the life of their project provides a wonderful case study in how Creative Capital supports artists pursuing ambitious projects with a combination of financial and advisory support.

APPLICATION PROCESS

As with all our grantees, PearlDamour was selected through our open-call, three-phrase application process. Nearly 100 arts professionals from across the country serve as readers, evaluators and panelists who review the applications and help to determine the projects that are awarded Creative Capital grants.

Remarkably, Creative Capital’s grantmaking process created an  opportunity for PearlDamour to develop their project before they even received a grant. Continue reading →

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Our Grantmaking Process: How do we select our grantees?

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We are so proud of the fact that Creative Capital is one of the only national nonprofit organizations that awards grants to individual artists through an open application process. This means that anyone can apply, as long as you meet our basic eligibility criteria. In February, Creative Capital received over 2,700 Letters of Inquiry for grants in Emerging Fields, Literature and Performing Arts. In January 2013, we’ll announce the 46 funded projects in our next class of grantees. Yes, it really does take almost a year to determine the projects that will receive Creative Capital grants!

Applicants, funders and others in our network often ask us how we go about winnowing thousands of applications down to only 46 funded projects. The short answer: very thoughtfully, and with a lot of help.


Creative Capital actively solicits new applicants through an open call for Letters of Inquiry, using web-based outreach, in-person info sessions and partner organizations to help us spread the word. This year we worked with seven Program Consultants who advised us in our grantmaking process, in addition to 19 Recommenders in different parts of the country who suggested artists and artist organizations in their geographic region to notify about the grant deadline. Continue reading →

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Tips & Tools: Choosing Work Samples for Your Applications

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We’ve reached the point in our grantmaking process where applicants in Emerging Fields, Literature and Performing Arts who have advanced to the second round are asked to submit work samples. We thought this would be an appropriate moment to offer some tips for artists on providing quality work samples, a crucial element in any competitive application process. While these tips may have a bias towards Creative Capital’s process, they are hardly exclusive to us, and we hope these pointers will be useful to all artists!

  1. Don’t forget that your entire application—words and pictures—is an exercise in persuasion. Your job at this stage is to show the evaluators that: 1) You have a terrific and innovative idea; 2) You have the chops to pull off that idea; 3) The evaluator would be remiss to not join in on your extraordinary creative journey.
  2. Pick your work samples very carefully. They should build a bridge between what you’ve done before and what you propose to do now.  Do not assume that the evaluators will make that connection, however. Instead, make sure you tell them!
  3. The strongest work samples capture your singular sensibility and areas of exploration.  Continue reading →

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Best Practices for Grant Seekers

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As we begin accepting online Letters of Inquiry for grants in Emerging Fields, Literature and Performing Arts, we thought we’d offer some research and application tips for grant seekers. These are universal pointers, not necessarily specific to our own grant application. So whether you plan to apply for a Creative Capital grant or not, we wish you luck out there!

Don’t wait until the last minute. It is not worth the stress of having no time for reflection or revision.

Do your research. When considering a potential funder, take a look at their previously funded projects. Can you picture yourself in that community of ideas and creative expression? What is the range of diversities represented (career level and trajectory, sub-disciplines, subject matter, etc.)? Has there been a shift in the kinds of work or artists supported? Do all this while bearing in mind that the past is not necessarily an indicator of the future, though it does offer important clues.

Read the guidelines and application instructions. The guidelines are your cheat sheet extraordinaire. The granting organization always tells you what’s most important to them through their guidelines so pay attention and look for key words such as “emerging,” “innovation” and so on.  Continue reading →

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Grant Info Sessions: Reaching Out to Artists Nationwide

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Ruby Lerner presenting a grant info session in Kansas City

Creative Capital’s info sessions are simply gatherings where we can tell artists about what we do and how they can apply for a grant. Because we have one of the few open and competitive artist grant applications in the country, and because our selection process is multi-layered, takes a while, requires a good deal of thought and, yes, effort, we’ve always felt it important to reach out to artists. Not only to spread the word about Creative Capital, but to also offer advice, answer questions and get feedback about our system. We try to do these face-to-face meetings several times a year in different parts of the country.

I recently returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest where I conducted two meetings, one in Seattle at On The Boards, and a second in Portland at PICA’s Washington High School. In December, I’ll do a meeting in Miami, and in February, I’ll barnstorm through Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and, perhaps, San Diego. Continue reading →

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