Grants for Media Arts Projects in the US

Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) provides expansive funding opportunities to strengthen the nation’s arts and culture ecosystem.

Through project-based funding, the program supports opportunities for public engagement with the arts and arts education, for the integration of the arts with strategies promoting the health and well-being of people and communities, and for the improvement of overall capacity and capabilities within the arts sector.

Areas of Interest

• The NEA is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and fostering mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all individuals and groups. They encourage projects that seek to accomplish any of the following:
  • Contribute to a healthy and thriving local, regional, state-wide, and national arts and culture ecosystem.
  • Elevate artists as integral and essential to a healthy and vibrant society.
  • Celebrate the nation’s creativity and/or cultural heritage.
  • Facilitate cross-sector collaborations that center the arts at the intersection of other disciplines, sectors, and industries.
  • Support arts projects with a focus on advancing the health and well-being of individuals and communities.
  • Invest in organizational capacity-building and leadership development for arts organizations, arts workers, and artists.
  • Support existing and new technology-centered creative practices across all artistic disciplines and forms, as well as build arts organizations’ capacity to serve a broad public by providing access, training, and other resources to engage with digital technologies.
  • Address, develop creative work exploring, or reflect on the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), in a way that is consistent with valuing human artistry. Projects may include artistic work, from across all artistic disciplines, that improves the public’s awareness or understanding of the responsible use of AI in the field of arts.

Disciplines                 

• They fund arts projects in the following disciplines:
  • Artist Communities,
  • Arts Education,
  • Dance,
  • Design,
  • Folk & Traditional Arts,
  • Literary Arts,
  • Local Arts Agencies,
  • Media Arts,
  • Museums,
  • Music,
  • Musical Theater,
  • Opera,
  • Presenting & Multidisciplinary Works,
  • Theater, and
  • Visual Arts.

Funding Information

• Grants range from $10,000 to $100,000. All grants require a nonfederal cost share or match of at least 1 to 1. In addition, designated local arts agencies eligible to subgrant may request cost share/matching grants ranging from $30,000 to $150,000 for subgranting programs in the Local Arts Agencies discipline.

Intentions

• Competitive proposals will address elements align with one or more of these intentions:
  • Have regional, national, or field-wide significance. This includes local projects that can have significant impact within communities or are likely to demonstrate exemplary models for the film and media arts field;
  • Advance regional strategies and cross-sector partnerships in service of strengthening film and media arts ecosystems and creative industry pipelines with an eye toward the future. This includes projects that contribute to sustaining long-lasting relationships between film and media arts communities, the broader cultural ecosystem, and non-arts sectors across the United States;
  • Promote the health and well-being of people and their communities through film and media arts activities. This includes proposals addressing local issues, uplifting the power of storytelling and personal expression, or advancing digital equity by bridging digital divides and building digital skills;
  • Actively reduce socioeconomic and other barriers to access for artists, audiences, and community members whose opportunities to experience or participate in media arts are limited by factors such as geography, race or ethnicity, economics, or disability;
  • Build audiences and appreciation for film and media artists, works, genres, forms, and creative processes that are currently, or have historically been, underrepresented. This includes proposals increasing organizational capacity to support emergent and interdisciplinary creative practices rooted in the use of code, computation, and data.

Eligibility Criteria

• They welcome applications from a variety of eligible organizations, including first-time applicants; from organizations serving rural, urban, suburban, and tribal communities of all sizes; and from organizations with small, medium, or large operating budgets.
• Projects may be small, medium, or large, and may take place in any part of the nation’s 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. jurisdictions. A project may consist of one or more specific events or activities; it may be a new initiative or part of your organization’s regular season or activities.
• Organizations that undertake a single short-term program in a year could apply for that event, or they could identify certain components (such as the presentation of a particular artist and the associated activities) as their project.
• Organizations may apply for any or all phases of a project, from planning through implementation. A project should not encompass all of an organization’s activities or costs in a given year. The NEA does not fund general operating support.

For more information, visit National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).