Issue 21 / July 15, 2024

In this issue:

• General Operating Support & Youth Employment in the Arts Deadline is July 19

• IAC Creative Catalyst Grant Now Available

• Enrich Chicago Webinar on Chicago Art Funding Sustainability

• Midwest Culture Bearers Award • NOAHCON 24

• Interested in being an IAC Grant Reader?

• Illinois Artist Spotlight • Additional Opportunities

The Illinois Arts Council (IAC) Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) General Operating Support (GOS) and Youth Employment in the Arts (YEA) Grant Application deadline is this Friday, July 19 at 11:59 pm.

General Operating Support (GOS) Grants are available for Illinois non-profit organizations that provide ongoing arts programming. Youth Employment in the Arts (YEA) Grants provide funds to GOS grantees for individuals between the ages of 14-22.

Should applicants need support, a fifth and final GOS & YEA drop-in session is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, July 16, 2024 at 1:00pm. Drop-ins are one-hour sessions that have no agenda. Participants may ask questions of the participating Program Staff and get answers in real time. Drop-ins do not require pre-registration. Simply click the link above at the time of the meeting to join the call via WebEx.

A recorded webinar is also available to provide application tips and best practices.

If you have additional questions and require one-on-one support, please contact your Regional Program Director.

Creative Catalyst Grant is a new IAC grant program that offers support to Illinois artists and non-profit organizations for arts-related projects, programming, events, and/or professional development.

Creative Catalyst replaces IAC’s previous grant programs: Artstour & Live Music, Short-term Teaching Artist Residencies, and Individual Artist Support Grants. Applications previously considered under those grant programs are all eligible for Creative Catalyst.

The FY25 Creative Catalyst Grant is an open deadline grant program with an award amount up to $12,000 per applicant. Applications will be accepted until the funds have been expended. Each I AC region has its own allocation so regions may close at different times. Applications must be submitted to the I AC’s Sales force grant portal a minimum of 8 weeks prior to the start date of the arts project being considered for IAC funding.

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Join Enrich Chicago, our arts and philanthropy leadership steering committee, and TDC as we present the findings and recommendations of our recent funding equity research project. A follow-up to our first report, Portrait of Inequity, this report sought to discover how foundations’ activities have or have not changed since 2018, determine if the funding landscape has shifted for organizations, identify what organizations have benefited most from increased foundation investment, and to highlight the impact of foundation funding on the health of BIPOC arts organizations. This community-led project focused on the grantmaking period between 2020 and 2023, leveraging a mixed-methods research approach to gather new baseline qualitative and quantitative data. The final report presentation will include a set of community recommendations for philanthropic institutions in support of long-term sustainability and greater funding equity for BIPOC arts organizations.

This event will take place Virtually on Zoom on July 16th, 2024 from 9:30-11:30am.

Arts Midwest is now accepting applications for the 2024 Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

What is it? The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is a $5,000 award. It honors and amplifies the work of nine Midwestern culture bearers each year.
Who can apply? If you have been practicing arts and culture rooted in your heritage and ancestry for over 10 years and share your practice with your community, you can apply.
Where? You must live in the Arts Midwest region. This includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and the Native Nations that share this geography.
When to apply? Applications close at 11:59 pm CST on July 29, 2024. The first awards will be made in September 2024.

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National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH) in cooperation with MUSACOR have announced the annual NOAHCON 24 conference. NOAHCON 24 informs participants on current and emerging topics in the field, highlight best practices and exemplary programs, and connect an ever-expanding community to inspire conversation, collaboration + innovation. NOAHCON attracts artists of all disciplines, arts administrators, healthcare professionals (administrative and clinical), as well as researchers, creative and expressive arts therapists, designers, educators, students, and anyone with an interest in the transformative impact of arts in health.

Scholarship Opportunities are available through MUSACOR.

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Learn More About this Paid Opportunity

Illinois Artist Spotlight

Kira Dominguez Hultgren - FY24 Crafts Fellowship Recipient

Kira Dominguez Hultgren is a U.S.-based artist, weaver, and educator. They studied postcolonial theory and literature at Princeton University, and studio arts and visual and critical studies at California College of the Arts. Their research interests include material and embodied rhetorics, re-storying material culture, and weaving as a performative critique of the visual. Dominguez Hultgren weaves with the material afterlife of a so-called multiracial family: Chicanx-Indigenous-Indian-Hollywood Hawaiian-Brown-Black. Instead of being passed down, Dominguez Hultgren builds looms to weave into the frayed edges of lost language, culture, traditions, and lives that were deliberately cut-off in past generations. Her looms – whether digital jacquard, backstrap, floor, post – materialize this present absence often as largescale checkboxes and X-marks. Questions about cultural appropriation and codeswitching, exoticism, and performing cultural misrecognitions occupy their practice. Dominguez Hultgren has exhibited their work broadly including shows at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in NYC, Ballroom Marfa, the San Jose Museum of Quilt and Textile, the Roswell Museum, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, and Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco. Their work has received critical attention including reviews in the New York Times and Architectural Digest; and is in the de Young Museum of Fine Art’s permanent collection. Recent residencies and fellowships include the Basque BioDesign Center in Bilbao, Spain, Gensler, Facebook, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. Upcoming exhibitions include Craft Front and Center at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC and a public art installation in collaboration with the city of Berkeley, CA. Dominguez Hultgren is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the School of Art + Design. They are a 2024 United States Artists Fellow.

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