Organizations and artists should jointly prepare and sign a letter of inquiry of no more than three pages (including a brief, preliminary budget) and the letter of inquiry cover sheet (a total of four pages). This limitation is true for ArtPlace/Creative Work Fund requests as well as other Creative Work Fund letters. The lead artist also may include a professional resume of no more than two pages.
Letters should be sent or delivered to The Creative Work Fund, One Lombard Street, Suite 305, San Francisco, CA 94111. They must be received no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, December 2, 2011.
Media Arts and Performing Arts letters will be reviewed separately. Each letter will be screened by between two and five readers. From among the letters of inquiry received in each category, the Creative Work Fund will invite approximately 30 collaborating artists and organizations to submit more detailed proposals.
Each invited project will receive detailed guidelines about how to submit a full proposal. Full proposals include documentation illustrating the quality of the artists’ work, detailed budgets, and additional background information about the organizations.
Two panels (one in media arts and one in performing arts) comprising arts and community representatives will review the finalists’ proposals and recommend projects to be funded. Representatives of the foundations that support the Creative Work Fund will approve the final awards.
Grants will be awarded to collaborating 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organizations, not directly to collaborating artists.
Use plain, white or light stationery or paper (so it is easy for the Creative Work Fund staff to make clear photocopies)
Use a 12 point font typeface (no smaller)
Limit your letter to three pages of writing. (Additional pages will not be read.)
Include the letter of inquiry cover sheet (in addition to the three page letter)
Do not staple your letter or submit it in a folder
Mail or deliver your letter so that it is received by 5 p.m., December 2, 2011. (Facsimiles and electronic submissions are not currently accepted.)
The letter, no longer than three pages, should include:
Project description including information about how you will collaborate
Amount requested and summary budget (budget should be part of the three-page letter, not an additional page)
Description of the organization
Information demonstrating the range and quality of the artist’s work
Description of how the artist’s work relates to this project
Rationale for the collaboration between the artist and organization and a brief explanation of why the project is appropriate now
Discussion of how the work will reach audiences
If you wish to be considered for an ArtPlace/Creative Work Fund grant:
Check the box indicating your interest on the letter of inquiry cover sheet
Provide a brief description of the location where the project will take place, needs to be addressed, and the community members working with the artist
The letter of inquiry screening and proposal award decisions will be based on:
Evidence of the range and quality of the artist’s work
Evidence that the project is an authentic collaboration between the artist and the organization
Evidence that the project stretches organizational thinking and artistic imagination
Demonstrated capability of the organization in its field
Evidence of fiscal responsibility and sound organizational management
Feasibility of the proposed project, based on required materials, time line, and budget
Chicana/Latina Foundation collaborating with Laurie Coyle to create a half-hour digital documentary, Adios Amor, exploring the story of Maria Moreno, a mother of 12 children, and tenacious organizer of California’s migrant farm workers 50 years ago.
COLAGE collaborating with media artist Jen Gilomen to create “Family Time,” a short film and Web-based piece tracing two decades of evolution in the concept of family as experienced by people with one or more Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and/or Queer (LGBTQ) parents.
Community Resource Initiative collaborating with Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman to create Impact, a hand-drawn, medium length animated video that describes the experiences of the families of prisoners on death row, using their own words.
Contemporary Jewish Museum collaborating with new media artist Ken Goldberg to create Are We There Yet? an interactive and site-specific work that incorporates new technology to provoke timeless questions about cultural and individual identity, community, and contemporary experience. The finished work will be an interactive Website and site-specific, sound installation.
Russian Riverkeeper collaborating with sound artist Hugh Livingston to celebrate a newly reclaimed public park at a bend in the Russian River through creation of an outdoor sound installation on the river’s banks, along with a live performance and a Web archive of oral histories and natural environment recordings.
Choreographer and dancer Sean Dorsey collaborating with Queer Cultural Center to create Notes from the Gender Underground, an interdisciplinary dance theater concert created by Dorsey with an ensemble of four LGBT dancers, three composer/musicians, and a sound designer. The production explores the role of the “underground” in the formation and evolution of transgender identity and community.
Composer and musician Paul Dresher collaborating with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Joana Carneiro, on a new 18- to 24-minute work featuring two of Dresher’s large-scale invented instruments.
Philip Kan Gotanda collaborating with faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop a new play, I Dream of Chang and Eng, based on the lives of the original Siamese twins. Gotanda’s new work animates the lives of these pioneer figures while engaging a variety of contemporary issues about race, physical disability, and interracial marriage, among others.
Choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith and her company, Deep Waters Dance Theater, collaborating with director Ellen Sebastian Chang, visual artist Lauren Elder, and CounterPULSE to create Our Daily Bread, an interactive dance/video/text/meal collage that celebrates food, illuminates difference in cultural identity, and advocates for well-being in our food traditions and eating practices.
Composer Daniel Valdez collaborating with El Teatro Campesino to create, workshop, and premiere Canción De San Juan: Oratorio of a Small Town, a theatrical fusion oratorio. Based on ethnographic research and developed over the course of two years, this musical opus mixes instrumental and choral music, spoken narratives, and mixed-media projections.
For a full list of previously awarded grants, see Funded Projects/CWF Grant Recipients, 1994-2011.