The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) is pleased to announce a pilot cycle of its Neighborhood Engagement Artist Residency Grant Program (NEAR), formerly the Artist in Residence Grant Program (AIR), and launch of a new Creative Opportunities-Optimizing Promise Grant Program (CO-OP) to foster creative collaborations at social justice organizations.

“Both DCA grant programs honor and support an individual teaching-artist who acts as a project-leader to design and manage a series of community-relevant workshops culminating in a free public presentation,” said Danielle Brazell, DCA’s General Manager. “DCA also announces a new and revised City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Project Grant Program (COLA-IMAP) giving independent avant-garde artists the opportunity to create new works to be premiered by the City of Los Angeles in one or more group presentations.”

Applicants to this program should be mid-career master artists with a professional history of solo works. Master artists who work in groups, engage communities in their practice/projects, or make site specific work should apply to the NEAR program rather than COLA-IMAP which aims to support solo artists. Master artists who maintain both a solo studio-practice as well as a group-practice may apply to both NEAR and COLA-IMAP with category-specific proposals.

NEAR GRANT PROGRAM
NEAR supports freelance teaching-artists, social-activation artists, and social practice artists in providing community-based, participatory projects in self-selected non-arts venues within the City of Los Angeles. Competitive NEAR projects will gather, connect, and inspire participants and audiences who have little exposure to the proposed type of cultural opportunity. NEAR residencies can be five sessions ending in one public presentation or eleven sessions ending in one public presentation. The majority will take place within non-art nonprofit agencies, although projects in non-arts, for-profit business can also be eligible if these partner/host venues are appropriate and accessible to the general community. NEAR applicants that propose 11 workshops as the ideal duration for their community engagement, should also be prepared to scale-back to 5 workshops (DCA staff will notify NEAR applicants next May about whether the City budget provided for either a $12,000 or $6,000 contract).

For Fiscal Year 2022-23, DCA will continue to support NEAR projects in all districts of the City of Los Angeles. Returning applicants can expect the NEAR program concept, funding structure, and application requirements to remain the same from what was previously referred to as the Artist in Residence Grant Program (AIR).

·       For a NEAR residency – applicant teaching-artists (or collaborative duos/teams/ensembles under the leadership of a single applicant) must be freelance entrepreneurs with community-based practices that have been largely self-developed and remain primarily self-directed;
·       NEAR applicants will propose a residency involving a relationship with one (1) non-arts host organization, to take place at the same host organization’s location (or online if safer); and
·       Propose feasible projects that can be consistently attended by approximately 20 individuals.

CO-OP GRANT PROGRAM
New for this cycle is DCA’s invitation for CO-OP projects in all of the city’s council districts, with a special emphasis on expanding the projects which DCA supported with NEA funding in social justice organizations based in the federally registered South LA Promise Zone (Council Districts 8, 9, 10, and 15, south of the 10 freeway and north of 228th Street). In contrast to NEAR projects, a CO-OP proposal should be submitted by a nonprofit social justice organization who seeks to employ a freelance teaching artist, or by a nonprofit arts organization who seeks to expand an already-employed teaching-artist’s responsibilities to serve a social justice organization. Depending upon its budget for Fiscal Year 2022-23, DCA aims to support approximately 15 to 22 residences at either $6,000 or $12,000 (ideally one for each of the city’s 15 Council districts) and an additional 10 to 15 CO-OP residencies at $15,000 each.

·       For a CO-OP residency, DCA encourages the social justice organization submitting the application to provide a residency for the teaching-artist named in the proposal. If the teaching artist is an employee (part-time or seasonal) of a local nonprofit arts organization, then either nonprofit can be the primary applicant. In either case, the workshops led by the artist should employ methodologies the artist has mastered to launch or sustain a partnership that benefits the 20 (or more) clients gathered and enrolled by the social justice organization;

NEAR and CO-OP Applications Timeline
·       Deadline to apply is November 5, 2021.
·       Grant activity/projects will take place between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.
·       May/June 2021: Applicants will receive notification of results.

For full program information, please review the program guidelines available at: https://dcaredesign.org/air/. After you have reviewed the guidelines, please proceed to prepare and submit an application at: https://dca-la.smapply.org/.

CITY OF LOS ANGELES INDIVIDUAL MASTER ARTIST PROJECT GRANT PROGRAM (COLA-IMAP)
The City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Project Grant Program (COLA-IMAP) gives accomplished artists the opportunity to create a new piece or body of work with the freedom to re-focus on themselves and their core impulses. The COLA-IMAP grant category honors a spectrum of the City’s avant-garde artists who:

·       Are dedicated to an ongoing body of excellent work.
·       Represent a relevant progression through their pieces or series over the past 15 years (or 8 years for a dancer-choreographer).
·       Exemplify a generation of core ideas in their field.
·       Are respected by their peers and are role models for other artists because of their distinguished record.

Approximately 6 to 12 COLA-IMAP $10,000 grant-contracts will be offered for designers/visual artists (including architects, graphic designers, and product designers including fashion designers), literary artists (poets or fiction writers) and performing artists (including choreographers who wish to make and perform individual dance works, musicians who wish to compose and perform individual music works, and multi-disciplinary theater artists who wish to invent and perform solo works).

DCA will organize an online and/or printed catalog to promote the entire set of COLA-IMAP grantees as “creative treasures” and document the group as one cross-section of the exciting Los Angeles art scene. DCA and community partners will also attempt to showcase a curated selection of each master-artist’s new work in either a gallery exhibition or performing arts showcase.

COLA-IMAP Workshops
A series of online webinar workshops will be available through early October. Webinar space is limited to 30 participants per webinar and RSVPs are required at least two business days in advance.
Workshops/webinars link: https://dcaredesign.org/cola/workshop-schedule/

COLA-IMAP Application Timeline
·       Deadline to apply is November 5, 2021.
·       Grant activity/projects will take place between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023.
·       June/July 2022: Applicants will receive notification of results.

COLA-IMAP Guidelines and Application: For full program information, please review the program guidelines available at: https://dcaredesign.org/cola/. After you have reviewed the guidelines, please proceed to prepare and submit an application at: https://dca-la.smapply.org/.

For more information, please visit culturela.org