Deadline: 15-Jan-25
The Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant program aims to improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for military service members and veterans exposed to trauma as well as their families and caregivers through experiences of art or art making.
The Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA).
These Creative Forces Community Engagement Grants are intended to support non-clinical arts engagement programs taking place in healthcare, community, or virtual settings. Creative Forces-supported community programs have involved a range of arts activities, including visual, written, and performing arts offered through single events, drop-in programs, and ongoing engagement led by artists in residence, teaching artists, or creative arts therapists.
What Creative Forces provides?
- Matching grants of up to $25,000 for one-year advanced projects
- Matching grants of up to $10,000 for one-year emerging projects
- Matching grants of up to $50,000 for two-year advanced projects
- Opportunity to regularly connect and learn with fellow organizations across the country who provide arts engagement activities to military communities
- Opportunity to attend an annual in-person convening of grantees, subject matter experts, and Creative Forces stakeholders
- One-on-one consultations and cohort workshops with experts in evaluation and data collection
Outcomes
- Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant Program projects should engage military-connected individuals through experiences of art or art-making with one or more of the following participant outcomes in mind:
- Creative Expression: Participants have a better understanding of themselves and others by creating or engaging with art.
- Social Connectedness: Participants have supportive relationships in their life and a sense of belonging to a community.
- Resilience: Participants feel they can rebound from stress, unexpected events, or life’s challenges.
- Independence and successful adaptation to civilian life: Participants have both an individual and shared sense of purpose, as well a positive self-worth, that supports adapting and readjusting to civilian life.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Applicant Organization must:
- be a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)3, U.S. organization, a unit of state or local government, or a federally recognized tribal community or tribe located in the U.S. (including the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories as well as the Native nations that share that geography);
- have either a minimum of three years’ experience:
- programming for/with military communities or
- presenting/producing arts-based projects;
- have completed a three-year history of programming prior to the application deadline. Programming is not required to have taken place during consecutive years. If your programming was affected or suspended due to COVID-19, you may reference 2020 or 2021 programming that was cancelled or reimagined due to the pandemic.
- Successful applicants have included:
- Arts nonprofits with a mission that focuses on serving military communities
- Performing arts nonprofits (theaters, dance companies, musical groups) looking to expand their mission to include programming for military communities
- Military and veteran-serving nonprofits expanding their services to include the arts
- Municipal and regional arts centers expanding and designing course offerings for military communities
- Community radio stations
- Universities that include community engagement in their arts, health, and military programming
Ineligibility Criteria
- The following types of organizations are not eligible to apply:
- Organizations whose primary purpose is to channel resources (financial, human, or other) to an affiliated organization if the affiliated organization submits its own application. This prohibition applies even if each organization has its own 501(c)3 status.
- State and jurisdictional arts agencies (SAAs) and Regional Arts Organizations (RAOs) are not eligible to apply or serve as partners in Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant Program projects.
For more information, visit Mid-America Arts Alliance.