Project Grant Program – Individuals and Collectives | Calgary Arts Development

Individual Artists:

• Individual artists applying to this program must pursue a professional practice. We consider a professional artist to be an artist who is actively pursuing a career in the arts, and who has invested in the development of their artistic skills, voice, and goals.
• Professional artists may have formal or informal training. We value all ways of knowing, learning and developing an artistic practice.
• Professional artists have shared, or are actively striving to share, their work publicly and be compensated for their work.
• Professional artists have a relationship with their artistic communities and peers.
• Artists do not need to be working professionally in the arts full-time.

Artist Collectives:

• We consider an artist collective to be two or more individual artists who work together in either an ongoing or ad hoc way, who have a shared artistic practice that is distinct from their own individual artistic practices. Collectives need to define their collective practice, vision, goals, and process in order to demonstrate that collective members have equal and shared ownership and accountability for the vision, success and completion of the proposed project or activities.
• A majority of collective members must be Calgary-based artists (i.e. 50% or more).
• An artist collective does not include for-profit organizations or businesses, groups that are formally registered as a non-profit society, or those which intend to govern themselves like a non-profit society.

Collaborations with Artists:

• We will consider applications from individuals who do not meet the definition of a professional artist or artist collective as long as they can demonstrate the below, and at the discretion of Calgary Arts Development staff:
  • Artists are core collaborators or participants in the planning, development, and implementation of the project.
  • The project and budget provides financial and non-financial support to artists.
  • The applicant has a demonstrated history of working with artists and/or the arts sector.