Guide to Grants: Project Grants Page 2

Project Grants: Principles

Project Grants assist all types of organizations with providing quality arts programming to their community. Project Grants are awarded, in general, to assist with the costs of connecting artists (or their artistic work) with the community. These arts experiences are what create public value of the arts and the rationale for the investment of public funds.

Organizations are required to match these costs as well as provide their own funding for staff, marketing, administration and the other expenses required to produce the activities.

The shape and scope of projects is purposely left flexible to respond to the diverse and changing needs of communities. They may include exhibits; festivals; artist residencies of any length; series of readings, performances or lectures; workshops and master classes; production of literary publications; or the creation of public art and design projects. Applicants actually define the community being served - it may be geographic or, instead, may be artistic, or culturally- or age-specific, or may be defined by another attribute.

The Commission encourages projects that build participation through broadening and diversifying participation to new people and groups, and/or which deepen the artistic experience for current audiences/participants. Multi-day or series of events are generally reviewed more favorably than one-day events (festivals excepted). For more information about ways to build participation, contact Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker at (602) 229-8222 or email kvaughanbrubaker@azarts.gov or visit Understanding Participation at www.azarts.gov/up. Click here to see what we mean about Public Value and Public Participation.

Strategic Plan
The Commission’s new strategic plan recognizes that people in Arizona should have opportunities to broaden, deepen and diversify their participation in the arts. By focusing Commission resources on artistic fees and related expenses, it is our intention to encourage arts and community organizations to involved quality artists from the local region, or from outside the community, that bring new and rich experiences to the organization’s “in-house” artists as well as to audiences, students and other participants.

The Commission supports both in-state and out-of-state artists at the same level, again allowing the applicant the flexibility to select those artists most appropriate for their project and community. Arizonans should have access to the highest quality and most diverse artists available, whether local, in-state, regional, national or international.

Success can be measured in many ways when setting/evaluating goals for a project. Often, the arts industry measures success in terms of numbers, i.e. a high attendance at an event is seen as desirable. There are also, however, opportunities to set goals that address the quality of the experience for the participants. If an applicant has stated that the depth or meaning of the experience is a goal, this should articulate these distinctions in the proposal. Good ideas about assessment and evaluation in the arts are available at www.azarts.gov/guide/evaluation_assessment.htm.

Public/Private Relationships
The Commission has developed the following guidance for applicants where the relationship between the public purpose and private endeavor is unclear: when applicants partner with private collections or collectors or businesses, they should describe the rationale for their choices and demonstrate the public benefit to using public resources to support the collaboration.

The issue of using or the perception of using public money where a single person or organization/ foundation could financially benefit from the increased value of a visual arts collection or project is currently being debated nationally. Yet, the installation of these private collections in arts spaces in the state and regionally have made quality works accessible to a broad public. As well, other public/private partnerships exist such as encouraging commercial bookstore representatives to attend readings of Commission-sponsored writers and sell the work of the writers.

Technology
Because more visual arts work is connecting the arts and technology, costs associated with the production materials such as gallery catalogs on CD rom, etc. will now be considered as eligible fees for projects when those costs are directly tied to the artistic mission of the organization and its efforts to reach audiences/participants.

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Updated 03/07/06