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). 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 Wednesday, March 5, 2008.
Literary Arts and Performing Arts letters will be reviewed separately. Each letter will be screened by between two and five readers. See below for further instructions.
After letters are reviewed, each invited project will receive detailed guidelines about how to submit a full proposal along with a $200 stipend to offset duplication costs. Full proposals, due June 27, 2008, include documentation illustrating the quality of the artists’ work, detailed budgets, and additional background information about the organizations.
Two panels (one in literary 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.
Letter of inquiry instructions: Literary Arts or Performing Arts
What to include in a letter of inquiry
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
How to present your letter of inquiry
- 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
- 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 (facsimiles are not accepted)
- Make sure it is received at the Creative Work Fund office by 5 p.m., Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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, timeline, and budget
Examples of previously funded literary arts projects
Poetry Flash collaborated with poet Robert Hass and sculptor Shane Eagleton to create “River of Words,” a twenty-foot carved poetry panel on salvaged wood. The panel has been featured at local and national events on literature and the environment where the public is invited to take rubbings from the carved poem and images.
The African American Museum and Library collaborated with writer Opal Palmer Adisa, photographer Ian Moore and video artist Jonathan Eubanks on an oral history, public readings, and multi-media exhibit about the lives of long-time African-American residents of West Oakland.
Huong Viet Community Center collaborated with poet Truong Tran and photographer Chong Hoang Chuong to study Vietnamese immigration across generations. As informal artists-in-residence at the Center, the artists interviewed several generations of immigrants, participated in community events, and then conducted research in Vietnam. Their photographs and poems were collected in The Book of Perceptions, published by Kearny Street Workshop, and sold to benefit the Center’s programs.
Manifest Press collaborated with translator Christopher Daniels and Brazilian artists Josely Vianna Baptista and Francisco Faria to create On the Shining Screen of the Eyelids, a bilingual book of contemporary poetry and art.
Bay Area Radio Drama, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Earwax Productions collaborated to produce a series of three original hour-long audio compositions. Ferlinghetti juxtaposed autobiography, commentary, and poetry in a highly personal acoustic exploration of “the current state of American consciousness.” The pieces are being broadcast on public radio nationally and internationally.
Community Works and Margo Perin created “Only the Dead Can Kill,” a book, CD, and web page featuring autobiographical stories created by Perin and inmates in San Francisco County Jail. With Perin as artist-facilitator, inmates wrote about their experiences of childhood, parenting, physical and substance abuse, and criminality, while Perin wrote on related elements in her life story.
The Poetry Center and poet Norma Cole created a gallery installation and a fine press book on the occasion of the Center’s 50th Anniversary. During the Center’s retrospective exhibit at the California Historical Society, Cole devised a series of “writer’s rooms” in which she worked and from which she invited, responded, and incorporated into her writing the comments, perceptions, and contributions of visitors. The Poetry Center documented the project’s evolution on video and as a fine-press art book.
Queer Cultural Center and writer Michelle Tea created, developed, and presented “TransForming Community,” a reading and discussion based on new writings developed in collaboration with six queer, transgender, and intersex literary and spoken word artists.
Examples of Previously Funded Performing Arts Projects:
KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble collaborated with director Ellen Sebastian Chang and composer Mariana Sadovska to create The Rusalki Cycle, an opera weaving together traditional Slavic folk songs with original new music.
Monologist Josh Kornbluth collaborated with Z Space Studio and campus-based Democracy Matters, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization working for campaign finance reform, to develop an evening-length theatrical monologue—the third work in Kornbluth’s “Citizen Josh” series.
Bass player, orchestra and ensemble leader, and jazz composer Marcus Shelby collaborated with Yerba Buena Arts and Events to create “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman,” an original secular oratorio for jazz orchestra.
Laeticia Sonami and East Bay teenagers collaborated with the Tinker’s Workshop and Nick Bertoni on “The BAGS Project,” an interactive, musical environment in which animated kinetic bags, activated by the public, revealed humorous and provocative sonic elements.
Collaborating with Alliance Française, playwright Ben Yalom and foolsFURY Theater Company translated, workshopped, and premiered in San Francisco a work by Fabrice Melquiot, one of France’s most significant young playwrights.
Composer Anthony Brown collaborated with choreographer Deborah Vaughn and Dimensions Dance Theater to explore migration stories of African Americans to and within the Bay Area and the empowering effect that music and dance have had on those who came to begin a new life in the region. The finished work, Cross Currents, was performed by Anthony Brown’s Orchestra and dancers from Dimensions Dance Theater and Dimensions’ Extensions Performance Ensemble.
Mechanical theater artist Matt Heckert is collaborating with composer Paul Dresher, percussionist Steven Schick, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble to create large-scale musical instruments that will function as the set and sound-generating sources for a new music-theater work. After the live theatrical performance has premiered in 2007-08, Heckert’s sound sculptures and Dresher’s music will be presented in an audience-interactive installation at a local gallery or museum.
Composer and musician John Santos is collaborating with the San Francisco Jazz Organization’s (SFJAZZ’s) All-Star High School Ensemble to create Traditions in Transition, a musical suite exploring the past, present, and future of Afro-Latin music. Santos will create the suite with SFJAZZ’s 20-piece teenage big band, its director Dr. Dee Spencer, and John Calloway, who will arrange it for performance by the All-Stars and professional local guest artists playing a broad range of traditional folkloric instruments.
For a full list of previously awarded grants, see CWF Recipients.
