Early Career Development Program for Organizations

Deadline: 10-Jul-24

Early Career Development Program is offering grants to support immersive and highly impactful opportunities, with measurable learning outcomes, for Emerging and Early Career Practitioners to:

Develop their artistic or administrative practice.
Participate in knowledge transfer, skill sharing, and reciprocal learning in the sector.
Expand their career experience, professional networks, and exposure.
Build capacity in their identified community(ies) (for example, geographic, cultural, area of practice).

For Organizations:

Internship supports arts and culture organizations to host an Early Career Practitioner in a paid internship.
Cohort supports arts and culture organizations to host a group or cohort of Early Career Practitioners in paid professional development positions.

For Organizations in Regional Communities – Basic Training Pilot Project:

Basic Training is a new component in the Early Career Development program intended to support emerging and early career arts and arts practitioners (Arts Trainees) who may not have access to training opportunities (for example, post-secondary studies) because of where they are located. They developed this component in response to needs identified through sector-wide consultations, in conversations with artists and arts organizations in regional areas, and through a review of results from recent program intakes.
Basic Training – Internship supports arts and culture organizations in regional communities to provide paid on-the-job training and experiential learning opportunities for new and emerging artists, arts administrators, and arts and cultural practitioners who want to work in their home communities.
Basic Training – Cohort supports arts and culture organizations in regional communities to provide paid on-the-job training and experiential learning opportunities for a group of two or more new and emerging artists, arts administrators, and arts and cultural practitioners who want to work in their home communities.

Designated Priority Groups

The BC Arts Council has committed to targeted investment in underserved and equity-deserving organizations and the development of equity support initiatives, including a policy to support designated priority groups. These identified groups will be the focus of BC Arts Council strategic measures, through dedicated programs, funding prioritization processes, partnerships, and outreach.
The BC Arts Council’s designated priority groups include applicants and arts and cultural practitioners who are:
- Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, or Inuit) Peoples
- Deaf or experience disability
- Black or people of colour
- Located in areas outside greater Vancouver or the capital region

Funding Information

Maximum request amount is $30,000.

Eligible Activities

General eligibility considerations for an Internship or Cohort:
- Activities must prioritize learning, knowledge transfer, and skill development, and include specific learning objectives with tangible outcomes for the Early Career Practitioner. Organizational needs are secondary.
- Projects may include a mix of learning and creation. However, the creation and development of new work must not be the sole or primary objective.
- Interdisciplinary knowledge transfer is eligible, but this grant program is not intended to provide basic training for applicants seeking to pivot to a new field of practice.
- Projects must take place over a minimum of eight weeks to a maximum of one year.
- Projects may take place in B.C., in Canada, or internationally.
An eligible Internship must:
- Identify an eligible Early Career Practitioner who will be engaged as a paid employee in an immersive and structured experience. Part- and full-time placements are eligible.
An eligible Cohort must:
- Engage all cohort members for the full duration of the project.
- Provide paid professional development opportunities to a group of at least two eligible Early Career Practitioners who must be identified in the application, and who will be working together in an immersive, cohesive, and structured experience. While they must be engaged in the same project, activities for individual participants may vary to allow for specific skillbuilding or knowledge-transfer opportunities aligned with the learning goals and career objectives of each practitioner.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible, an organization must be:
- Registered and in good standing as a non-profit society or community service co-op in B.C. for at least one fiscal year prior to application with:
  - The majority of key staff and board members based in B.C.
  - Creative control and decision making for programming and engagement primarily maintained within the organization and by leadership based in B.C.
  - A purpose or mandate primarily dedicated to arts and culture programming and activities. or
  - A purpose or mandate to provide services to the arts and culture sector in B.C.
  - Operations and activities that reflect this dedicated purpose or mandate.
- An Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) community organization registered and in good standing as a non-profit society or community service co-op in B.C. for at least one fiscal year prior to application with:
  - The majority of key staff (paid or volunteer) and board members based in B.C.
  - A commitment to offering regular arts and culture activities.
- An Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) government in B.C. that offers regular arts and culture activities.
- An arts and culture organization operated by a local government in B.C. for at least one fiscal year prior to application, that:
  - Maintains an ongoing arm’s length, community-based board of management or advisory structure that sets policy for the organization’s programs and services.
  - Holds a dedicated programming space and has at least one dedicated staff person in an artistic, curatorial, editorial, or administrative leadership position who is responsible for programming and engagement.
  - Offers ongoing public programming by experienced arts and cultural practitioners.
  - Primarily operates with autonomy, holding creative control and decision making for programming and engagement within the organization, with separate financial records for operations.
- An arts and culture organization operated by a public post-secondary institution in B.C. for at least one fiscal year prior to application, that:
  - Holds a dedicated programming space and has at least one dedicated staff person in an artistic, curatorial, editorial, or administrative leadership position who is responsible for programming and engagement.
  - Offers ongoing public programming by experienced arts and cultural practitioners, the majority of which is not programming of faculty or student works.
  - Primarily operates with autonomy, outside of curriculum, holding creative control and decision making for programming and engagement within the organization, with separate financial records for operations.
- An eligible book publisher according to the criteria in the guidelines of the Project Assistance: Literary Arts or Operating Assistance: Book Publishers programs
All eligible organizations must also:
- Provide public arts and cultural programming (or service to the arts and culture sector) in B.C. as a primary activity and have done so for a minimum of one year before the application closing date.
- Provide programs or publications that benefit or are of interest to the community at-large and not solely the interests of its nonprofit society members.
- Fairly compensate artists, arts and cultural practitioners, technicians, Elders, and Knowledge Keepers. Compensation must align with project contexts and industry standards within the field of practice.
- Follow international intellectual property rights standards and cultural ownership protocols.
- Follow the Criminal Records Review Act which requires that people who work with or may have unsupervised access to children or vulnerable adults must undergo a criminal record check by the Criminal Records Review Program.
- Have completed and submitted any overdue final reports on previous BC Arts Council grants by the intake closing date for this grant program.
To be eligible to participate in an Internship or Cohort, an Early Career Practitioner must:
- Be working or practicing in an area funded by the BC Arts Council, including but not only:
  - Arts Administration
  - Community-Based Arts
  - D/deaf, Disability and Mad Arts
  - Literary Arts (creative writing, publishing)
  - Media Arts
  - Multi- and Interdisciplinary Arts
  - Museums or Indigenous Culture Centres
  - Performing Arts (music, theatre, dance, circus arts, comedy, production and/or technical)
  - Visual Arts (critic, curator, artist in contemporary or traditional visual arts and/or craft, including Indigenous Arts).
- Be legally allowed to work in Canada as a citizen, a Permanent Resident, or hold a work permit.
- Ordinarily reside in B.C. and lived in the province for at least 12 months immediately prior to the application deadline. The Early Career Practitioner must be prepared to provide documentation to support residency status upon request.
- Not be enrolled in full-time studies when the Internship or Cohort is taking place.

Ineligible

The following types of organizations are not eligible to apply for this grant:
- Private or for-profit entities (except in the case of for-profit book publishing companies)
- Member-funded societies
- Social service organizations
- Industrial sites, archaeological sites, heritage sites, or historic places
- Organizations dedicated to archives
- Arts or Curatorial Collectives. Collectives hoping to engage an Early Career Practitioner should encourage the individual artist to apply through the Mentorship or Residency component.

For more information, visit BC Arts Council.