National Endowment for the Arts

A. Waller (College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture )
J. J. Barrios (Public & Applied Humanities)

UArizona may submit two proposals to this funding program.

Through Our Town, the NEA is proud to support creative placemaking projects that integrate arts, culture, and design into local efforts that strengthen communities over the long-term. The program demonstrates the ways in which artists, culture bearers, and designers can help to: 

• Bring new attention to or elevate key community assets and issues, voices of residents, local history, or civic infrastructure;
• Inject new or additional energy, resources, activity, people, or enthusiasm into a place, community issue, or local economy;
• Envision new possibilities for a community or place—a new future, a way of approaching a new opportunity, overcoming a challenge, or problem-solving;
• Connect communities, people, places, and economic opportunity through physical spaces or new partnerships and relationships; or
• Honor traditions shaped by the lived experience of a community’s residents, such as music, dance, design, crafts, fashion, cuisine, and oral expression.

Our Town projects engage a wide range of local stakeholders in efforts to advance local economic, physical, or social outcomes in communities. Competitive projects are responsive to unique local conditions, authentically engage communities, advance artful lives, and lay the groundwork for long-term systems change. (Systems changes can include, for example: establishment of new and sustained cross-sector partnerships; shifts in institutional structure, practices or policies; replication or scaling of innovative project models; or establishment of training programs). 

B. James  (Department of Medicine)

UA may submit one proposal.

Through project-based funding, the program supports public engagement with, and access to, various forms of art across the nation, the creation of art, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life. We 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 Arts, Theater, and Visual Arts.

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 its planning through its implementation. A project should not encompass all of an organization’s activities or costs in a given year.

Additional submission information:

• An organization may submit only one application under these FY 2024 Grants for Arts Projects guidelines (i.e., one application per calendar year).
• All Artist Communities and Design applicants must apply at the February 9, 2023, deadline.
• An organization may not apply to both the Challenge America category and the Grants for Arts Projects category in the same calendar year. UA is not eligible to apply to the Challenge America, due an active award.
• An organization may apply to other NEA funding opportunities, including Our Town, in addition to Grants for Arts Projects. If you submit applications to other opportunities, each request must be for a distinctly different project or a distinctly different phase of the same project, with a different period of performance and costs.

   

Exceptions to the one-application rule are made only for:

• Parent (and Related) Organizations
  A parent organization that comprises separately identifiable and independent components (e.g., a university campus that has a presenting organization and a radio station) may submit an application for each such component. In addition, a parent organization also may submit one application on its own behalf for a project that is different from any project submitted in an application by its independent component(s).

• Applicants to the Media Arts discipline at the July 6, 2023, deadline
  An organization of any artistic discipline may submit one additional application in the Grants for Arts Projects category through the Media Arts discipline at the July 6, 2023, deadline. The additional application must be for a distinctly different project and must align with certain programmatic requirements described here: Additional Applications in Media Arts.

   

Areas of particular interest:

• 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.
• Contribute to healthy and thriving local, regional, state-wide, and national arts ecosystems and arts infrastructures.
• Invest in organizational capacity-building and leadership development for arts organizations, arts workers, and artists.
• Build arts organizations’ capacity to serve a broad public through digital or emergent technology and/or support tech-centered creative practices across all artistic disciplines and forms.
• Originate from or are in collaboration with the following constituencies encouraged by White House Executive Orders:
  • Historically Black Colleges and Universities,
  • Tribal Colleges and Universities,
  • American Indian and Alaska Native tribes,
  • Predominantly Black Institutions,
  • Hispanic Serving Institutions,
  • Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and
  • Organizations that support the independence and lifelong inclusion of people with disabilities.

No applicants // Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 2

Our Town is the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program. These grants support projects that integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes.

Successful Our Town projects ultimately lay the groundwork for systems changes that sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into local strategies for strengthening communities. These projects require a partnership between a nonprofit organization and a local government entity, with one of the partners being a cultural organization.

UArizona is INELIGIBLE to submit to the July 2022 deadline for this program because the university submitted an application to the February 2022 deadline. UArizona may submit one application per calendar year. Independent Components are eligible to submit separately. Contact RDS with questions

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

UArizona may submit one application per calendar year. Independent Components are eligible to submit separately.

Institutional Ticket: D. Taylor

UArizona may submit one institutional application. The institutional application will be coordinated by Andrew Schulz, Vice President for the Arts.

Independent Components are eligible to submit separately.

Applicants may request a fixed grant amount for: $50,000, $100,000 or $150,000. Cost share/matching funds are not required. A grant period of up to two years is allowed.

Grants will be made to eligible organizations to support their own operations. Unlike other Arts Endowment funding programs that offer project-based support, Rescue Plan funds are intended to support day-to-day business expenses/operating costs, and not specific programmatic activities. Cost share/matching funds are not required.

Support is limited to any or all of the following:

• Salary support, full or partial, for one or more staff positions. Staff positions funded may not conduct work independent of the organization receiving funds.
• Fees/stipends for artists and/or contractual personnel to support the services they provide for specific activities as part of organizational operations.
  • Artist fees/stipends should be related to work with a tangible outcome, such as performances, presentations, workshops, and/or the creation of artwork. This is considered a stipend to the artist for the work undertaken during the period of performance. Such work must not be performed independently of the organization receiving funds.
• Facilities costs such as mortgage principal, rent, and utilities.
• Costs associated with health and safety supplies for staff and/or visitors/audiences (e.g., personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer, etc.).
• Marketing and promotion costs.

Rescue Plan funds may be used to support existing jobs, new jobs, or to restore jobs that were furloughed or eliminated due to the pandemic.

Arizona State Museum IC: L. Falk
University of Arizona Museum of Art IC: J. McCleary

No applicants // Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 2 

Our Town is the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program. Through project-based funding, it supports projects that integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes.

Successful Our Town projects ultimately lay the groundwork for systems changes that sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into local strategies for strengthening communities. These projects require a partnership between a local government entity and nonprofit organization, one of which must be a cultural organization; and should engage in partnership with other sectors (such as agriculture and food, economic development, education and youth, environment and energy, health, housing, public safety, transportation, and workforce development). Cost-share/matching grants range from $25,000 to $150,000, with a minimum cost share/match equal to the grant amount.

No applicants.

UArizona and the Independent Components are each only allowed to submit one application per calendar year. Since applications were submitted to the February 2021 deadline, UArizona has limited eligibility for the July 2021 deadline. Contact RDS for details if interested in applying.

S. Soto

M. Alvarez