Deadline: 11-Jul-2024
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is proud to support the nation’s arts sector with grant opportunities so that together they can help everyone live more artful lives.
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.
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.
They fund arts projects in the following disciplines:
- Artist Communities: Artist residencies that provide dedicated space, time, and resources to artists for the creation or development of new work
- Arts Education: Projects for pre-K-12 students, the educators and artists who support them, and the schools and communities that serve them.
- Dance: Dance projects in all genres, including creation of work, presentation and touring, residencies, archive/preservation of dance, services to the field, and education projects
- Design: Projects including architecture, communications and graphic design, fashion design, historic preservation, industrial and product design, interior design, inclusive design, landscape architecture, rural design, social impact design, and urban design
- Folk & Traditional Arts: Project activities in folk and traditional arts include culturally- or community-centered artistic traditions, represented by a wide-range of genres including, but not limited to, music, dance, crafts, foodways, dress/adornment, occupation, ceremony, and oral expression, such as stories, poetry, and language
- Literary Arts: Projects supporting publishing, distribution, and/or promotion of literary content, as well as literary arts programming and services to the field
- Local Arts Agencies: Projects by arts commissions, arts councils, departments of cultural affairs; national or statewide service organizations partnering with local arts agencies; and arts projects by local government and special districts
- Media Arts: Projects featuring film, cinema, audio, broadcast, creative code and computation, interactive media, and emergent practices at the intersection of arts and digital technology
- Museums: Museums projects including exhibitions, care of collections, conservation, commissions, public art works, community engagement, and education activities
- Music: Music and music presentation projects in all genres including classical, contemporary, and jazz
- Musical Theater: Musical theater and musical theater presentation projects
- Opera: Opera and opera presentation projects
- Presenting & Multidisciplinary Works: Projects presenting works from across disciplines, multidisciplinary works, and/or interdisciplinary artists
- Theater: Theater and theater presentation projects
- Visual Arts: Projects supporting visual artists and projects in all genres
Areas of Particular 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.
Funding Information
- Grants range from $10,000 to $100,000.
- Designated local arts agencies eligible to subgrant may request from $30,000 to $150,000 for sub-granting in the Local Arts Agencies discipline.
Eligibility Criteria
- The following are eligible to apply:
- Non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3), U.S. organizations;
- Units of state or local government; or
- Federally recognized tribal communities or tribes.
- Applicants may be arts organizations, local arts agencies, arts service organizations, local education agencies (school districts), and other organizations that can help advance the NEA’s goals.
- To be eligible, the applicant organization must:
- Meet the NEA’s Legal Requirements including non-profit, tax-exempt status at the time of application.
- Have completed a three-year history of arts programming prior to the application deadline.
- For the purpose of defining eligibility, programming may have taken place prior to when the organization incorporated or received non-profit, tax-exempt status.
- You will be asked to provide examples of previous programming in the application.
- For applicants to the February 2024 deadline, programming must have started in or before February 2021.
- For applicants to the July 2024 deadline, programming must have started in or before July 2021.
- Programming is not required to have taken place during consecutive years.
- Organizations that previously operated as a program of another institution may include arts programming it carried out while part of that institution for its three- year history.
- Eligible organizations that received American Rescue Plan (ARP) or CARES Act funding may apply to this program as long as there are no overlapping costs during the same time period.
- An organization whose primary purpose is to channel resources (financial, human, or other) to an affiliated organization may only apply if the affiliated organization does not submit its own application. This prohibition applies even if each organization has its own 501(c)(3) status. For example, the “Friends of ABC Museum” may not apply if the ABC Museum applies.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.