Canada Council for the Arts

• Canada Council for the Arts - Website
• Two deadlines per year: April (Spring) and September/October (Fall)
• First step: create a portal (takes 2-3 weeks for approval)
  • Select if you are an individual artist or group/organization
  • Select field of practice: inter-arts vs. multidisciplinary
    • Inter-arts: integrates disciplines, an individual arts body that holds intersecting forms
    • Multidisciplinary: theatre, dance and music as distinct disciplines
    • Have your CV meet all the boxes in eligible criteria (note: you will need to share/upload your CV)
    • Call if you have any questions about where you sit as an artist. Call literally anytime, they're there for you to call them!
  • You can add multiple artist profiles. For example you can be a Musician and Multi disciplinary
  • Different jury members in each category, so consider which jury would be best for your project when deciding which discipline to apply under
  • Indigenous applications will have more options for field of practice (example: Cultural carrier)

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Specific Grants from Canada Council

• Explore and Create
  • Professional Development for Artists‍
    • Developing as an artist
    • May use this to train somewhere
    • Up to $10,000
  • Research and Creation
    • For research portion of a project
    • $25,000 maximum
  • Concept to Realization
    • To complete the project
    • Up to $60,000
• Creating, Knowing and Sharing (grants for Indigenous artists)
  • More application dates—four times a year
  • Short term and long term project (long term may need to receive two other grants before)
  • Small-scale activities
  • Opportunities for travel

• Travel Grants or Career Development Grants
  • Opportunities to travel is possible for all artists

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• Other things to note:
  • Turn around time is approximately 3-4 months. Do not schedule activities until after the result is in
  • Concept to Realization is most common for first application
  • If you're Indigenous or disabled, the Canada Council will pay for grant writing support

BC Arts Council

• BC Arts Council - Website
• Shifting priorities to equity, diversity and inclusion
• Create a profile—approval doesn't take as long as Canada Council
• Grants include:
  • Professional development
  • Project assistance
  • Has categories for discipline
  • Smaller grants, approximately $10,000
  • 1 deadline: April/May
  • Can apply for Canada Council and BC Arts Council at the same time

Facilitating Grants

• Artstarts
• Neighbourhood Small Grants
• Neighbourhood grants through DTES Small Arts Grants or Vancouver Foundation‍
• Neighbourhood grants through the Vancouver Parks Board
• City of Vancouver
  • Have to be a NFP to apply
  • Individual or group can be sponsored for a project with a NFP (culture shift strategy)
  • Smaller grants ($5,000-$20,000)

General Notes

• Recommendation letters: ask for them 3 weeks prior. Send a description of the project, or even the beginning of the letter—this ensures you will get the letter
• Story of the budget should match story of writing 
• Be specific with your application and how it supports your community
• Have an editor, even if it is just your friend
• Sometimes it’s hard to express your projects and talk about how great you are as an artist. A few ideas are discuss the project with a friend, ask them to send a few notes about why they think you are great 
• Mental health breaks and care
• Tone: try and imagine who is reading it and write for them
  • Also should match the tone of the work
  • Touches both heart centered jury members and intellect/logistic minded jury members

Resources

• Grant Deadlines (source: Little Dog Creative Consulting)
  • This is written by a professional grant writer. You can backtrack and see what the grant calendar looked like last year and assume it will be similar.