Project Assistance: Early Career Development Program in Canada

Deadline: 30-Jun-22

The British Columbia (BC) Arts Council is inviting applications for the Project Assistance: Early Career Development Program to support immersive and highly impactful opportunities 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, and professional portfolio; and
Build capacity in their identified community(ies), e.g. geographic, cultural, area of practice, etc.

Components

Assistance through this program is available to both arts and culture organizations and to individual art practitioners through four components:

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 of early career practitioners in paid professional development positions.
For Individuals:
- Residency will provide early career practitioners with the opportunity to pursue a residency with an arts and culture organization.
- Mentorship will provide early career practitioners with the opportunity to develop sustained one-on-one learning through a mentorship with an established practitioner working in their field, art form, or discipline.

Early Career Development is not intended to support established or mid-career artists and practitioners transitioning within their practice or career. Career development activities for more established artists and practitioners may be eligible for support through the Professional Development program.

Funding Information

Request an award of a maximum of $30,000; and
Request funding for up to 100% of the project budget.

Eligibility Criteria

For Organizations
- To be eligible, an applicant must:
  - provide arts and cultural programming or service to the arts and culture sector in B.C. and have done so for a minimum of one year;
  - engage professionals in artistic, curatorial, administrative or project leadership;
  - fairly compensate artists, arts and cultural practitioners, technicians, Elders, and Knowledge Keepers. Compensation must align with project and community contexts and industry standards within the field of practice, including adhering to international intellectual property rights standards and cultural ownership protocols;
  - adhere to 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; and
  - have completed and submitted any overdue final reports on previous BC Arts Council grants by the submission deadline for this program.
- Organizational applicants must also:
  - be an arts and culture 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 a dedicated arts and culture purpose.
  - be an Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) community organization or Indigenous government in B.C., offering dedicated arts and culture activities.
  - be an arts and culture organization, operated by a local government or public post-secondary institution in B.C. for at least one fiscal year prior to application, with a community-based board of management that sets policy for the organization’s programs and services, and that offers public programming by professional arts and culture practitioners.
- Arts or Curatorial Collective applicants must also:
  - be established and readily identified as a collective of independent B.C. artists, curators, museum or cultural practitioners, consisting of three or more individuals who are professionally active in their field of practice, each of whom must:
    - have a minimum of two years of professional practice in their field, following basic training;
    - have a demonstrated body of previous work as an individual practitioner;
    - be a Canadian citizen or Permanent Resident; and
    - have been a resident of B.C. for at least 12 months immediately prior to the application deadline, and ordinarily reside in B.C. See Determining B.C. Residency page.
  - have a demonstrated history of creating or presenting work as a collective and have a clear commitment to a current practice;
  - apply under the name of an individual member of the collective who acts as the key contact person and be listed as the submitting representative within the online grant system. If the application is successful, this person receives payment of the award on behalf of the group, be issued a T4A, and be responsible for submitting the final report.
For Individuals: To be eligible to participate, an early career practitioner must:
- be working in one or more of the arts disciplines funded by the BC Arts Council;
- be a Canadian citizen or Permanent Resident who ordinarily resides in B.C., having lived in the province for at least 12 months immediately prior to the application being submitted. For more information, review the Determining B.C. Residency page;
- not be enrolled in full-time studies when the project is taking place;
- not have been named in two previous successful Early Career Development applications regardless of component, i.e., an individual may participate in a maximum of two Early Career Development projects in their lifetime;
- not be named in any other application in this program’s current intake; and
- not have any overdue final reports on previous BC Arts Council grants.
- identify with one of the BC Arts Council’s Designated Priority Groups, as described above, and have completed basic training in their discipline within ten years of the application deadline;
- have completed basic training in their discipline within five years of the application deadline.

For more information, visit BC Arts Council.

For more information, visit https://www.bcartscouncil.ca/program/early-career-development/