Problem

Making art takes money, especially art that truly engages with a community. Unfortunately, there are few funding opportunities for artists to propose their own projects, and most programs do so using a nominations system where someone within the arts community nominates an artist before they can apply. That makes it difficult for younger artists, artists who haven’t gone through formal training, or artists doing new types of work to have access to such opportunities.

The Gift

Your gift will support our open selection process and may help an artist become a Creative Capital grantee. Creative Capital is actually the only national organization, working with artists in all disciplines, that uses an open application process to select its grantees. That means that any artist who meets our eligibility criteria can apply for Creative Capital support. As a result, every time we conduct a grant round, we receive 2,000 to 3,000 applications. Those applications are narrowed down over the course of nine months, and each application is read by at least one staff person and one arts professional. Our method of selecting artists is more labor intensive, and therefore more expensive, than a nominations process, but it offers all artists an equal opportunity and has allowed us to discover exciting artists whose work had not yet been broadly recognized.