How to Apply for Grants and Residencies

As part of our Application Week series, Jasmine Dreame Wagner writes about putting together your strongest proposal to get funding for your work-in-progress.

As someone who’s been on both sides of a grant-application portal, as an applicant and as a juror, I know how difficult it can be to describe yourself and your project to a group of unknown people on the other end of a form. The creative process of bringing your art and writing into being can feel so certain, intuitive, and wide-ranging. But once you’re seeking financial support for it, a new challenge surfaces: facing an application form that may only provide a hundred or so characters to describe what could be a decade’s worth of thought and original work.

Over the course of several careers from writer and working artist to nonprofit development director, arts manager, and consultant, I’ve navigated some of the more complex government applications, including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA). I’ve also written or guided others through creating application materials for institutions like Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the New York Community Trust, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, as well as Fortune 500 corporate foundations, local foundations, and residency programs. I’ve also served as an artist juror on state- and community-level panels for arts grants and have juried book contests and residency programs. While I’ve worked in the arts as a fundraiser and producer, it’s important to clarify that my jury service has always been completed as an artist and as an educator rather than an administrator. (Arts juries are juries of your artist peers—the panels don’t consist of a granting institution’s staff).

One thing all of these applications have in common is that a grant or residency application, at its heart, is an opportunity to tell a story—a story about yourself and about the work you’d like to create. Grant writing is just another narrative form. If you can approach grant writing or residency applications in the way you might approach writing a memoir or mapping out a fictional character’s development, I guarantee you’ll learn new things about yourself and your work and maybe even enjoy the process of filling those boxes.

To put things in perspective, there’s a reason why grant and residency applications require artists to distill their work into its essence. There are many more applications than can be funded, and juries are staffed by working artists and arts administrators who are given a set amount of time to review the applications. In-person juries will meet for a short length of time, such as a work day, or a few days if the review will be extensive. The day starts early and the panel will work until all materials have been reviewed and discussed. Jurors will share their many takes on an artwork and its application materials and individually assign numbers to the work according to a rubric that the organization provides. When a juror is particularly moved by an application, they’ll usually have a brief opportunity to really go to bat for it and help others understand why it’s good, but at the end of the day, there’s only so much time and the jury must come to a consensus.

The more concise your project statement, artist statement, and bio, the less time the jury will need to parse it, leaving more time to spend on the work itself. And every time I have juried, without fail, I promise you, the jury is most interested in the work sample and the story that you tell about the work that you do.

There’s a reason why grant and residency applications require artists to distill their work into its essence.

Telling Your Story

I like to think of drafting a grant proposal or residency application’s personal statement as a kind of “Hero’s Journey” situation—you need to write about yourself and your work as though you’re the Batman and Robin (Ant-Man and the Wasp? Black Canary and Oracle?) of your grant application’s summer blockbuster. Superhero movies are formulaic, and so are applications. Try to think about your creative process as a progression through three acts: present, past, and future, with certain plot points that you need to hit to satisfy your audience. Breaking your creative practice into acts will help you see the trajectory of your life’s work as a compelling narrative arc with a distinct theme that works like a North Star to guide its progression.

First of all, a grant or residency jury will want to know who you are and what you’re working on right now. The jury will then want to understand what you’ve accomplished in the past and how that work forms a foundation for your present work. Finally, and critically, they’ll need to know where you’re headed in the future. Your future work will be the project that you’re proposing to complete, either with the grant or fellowship’s financial support or as a resident in the program.

One way to hit the essential elements of a strong proposal would involve using the “Hero’s Journey” plot points to guide your project statement or even your grant application as a whole. You can use these questions to guide you through your outlining process:

1. Inciting incident: What are you working on right now? How has the sudden urge to create this work—the aha moment when the project first grabbed you—changed your creative path?

2. Rising action: Why does the work need support at this point in your creative process? What is urgent about it? Why this work, why you, why now?

3. Midpoint: You have started the journey, demonstrated by the work included in your work samples. Describe them. Convince the granting organization that this project will be completed regardless of whether or not it is funded, whether or not you are chosen for a residency.

4. Climax: Why is this work urgently needed by the world? What critical issues in the wider landscape does the work address?

5. Denouement: How will you ensure that your project, in its final form, will emerge and settle into the world, make itself known? How will the work impact its audience in the short and long term? How do you see yourself as a member of the community of artists that this organization has previously supported?

Remember: In your statement, you should introduce your work in a way that shows how the work is either a deepening of your previous practice and its themes or a new and interesting departure from your prior creations. Explain your ideas in a basic way, in language that a smart high school student could understand, and in a voice that also demonstrates your confidence. Be excited. Share your enthusiasm. It’s contagious.

Refining Your Application

In my experience serving on juries, I’ve seen a few application issues consistently pop up, often causing an interesting project to be declined for a reason that isn’t immediately apparent to the applicant. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you’re developing your application and materials.

1. Be your best hype person. A well-written project statement or grant proposal will offer a succinct argument for your work. The argument should remain focused on your work and its importance from beginning to end and should not stray into discussions of ideas introduced by other artists and writers. Influence and appreciation for other artists’ work is essential, but space is limited in grant and residency applications. Every single word should be dedicated to celebrating and sharing your project. A grant or residency application is neither a book proposal, where the author lists their comps, nor an academic paper, where previous scholars are meticulously cited. A jury shouldn’t come away from your application with knowledge of another artist’s work. Keep all eyes on your vision. I’m noting this because I’ve read many applications where a project statement was limited to 250 words (or the equivalent) and the applicant spent fifty to seventy-five of those words quoting other authors. You’ve got limited real estate! Stretch out. Use it. Fill those 250 spots with original words about your work.

2. Budget for a profit. While most artists and writers make art just for the pure love of it, the fact is, creation is labor and we (and our collaborators) must be compensated for it. Many grant proposals require a budget. Always pay yourself first, and pay yourself a fair wage according to either the W.A.G.E. Fee Calculator or the Editorial Freelancers Association. Juries will scrutinize your budget to determine if your pay structure complies with the Department of Labor and whether any rentals and equipment costs are industry standard. Don’t be afraid of allowing fees to stack up in fear that expensive projects won’t be funded—that’s not true! Projects that are accurately budgeted are the ones who are funded. While serving on panels, I’ve seen proposals assigned low scores because their budgets didn’t pay the creators, or relied on too many in-kind donations, or because they omitted line items like theater rentals or wages for consulting editors or stage staff.

Give your budget some tough love before you submit it. What would a professional in another industry think about your budget? How would the granting organization’s executive director feel about the compensation you’re allocating for your director or production staff? Members of the jury are professional artists, writers, administrators, and critics, just like you. How would they like to be paid? Don’t be afraid to ask around about going rates, costs, and fees. People get nervous talking about money—throw that hesitation out the window and do all the necessary research you need to build a complete budget that can operate fairly in today’s economy.

3. Cultivate objectivity about your work. This is probably the hardest skill for an artist to acquire: the ability to read or view your work as though you’re a casual reader flipping through a book, an impartial viewer strolling through a gallery, or a hurried passerby at a festival overhearing a musician perform. Try to approach your work with detachment.

Imagine how other people might experience your art and the writing that you create to describe it. While I can’t suggest cultivating a nemesis in real life, read your statement through the eyes of a potential detractor and allow the experience to sharpen your vision. Approach your statement as though it’s an invitation for a potential critic to become your trusted ally—as though the reader is not a stranger but a future friend. Most of all, cultivate empathy for others who aren’t at all like you. Juries are designed to be diverse. If you’re a member of a privileged group, imagine how someone from a marginalized group might experience your application. If you’re from wealth, imagine how a working-class artist might approach your budget and your work’s depictions of money. If you’re white, imagine how your handling of characters and themes will be received by people of color. If you’re a cis man, pay attention to how your female or nonbinary characters navigate the world. If you’re straight, ask yourself if your gay characters are stereotypes. Juries will be sensitive to any unkindness. Learn about racism and bigotry, unconscious bias and microaggressions. Seek out art that offers an uncompromising artistic view of the world while also respecting its subjects.

Approach your statement as though it’s an invitation for a potential critic to become your trusted ally—as though the reader is not a stranger but a future friend.

This is a tough subject to write about, but as a member of a jury, I’ve had to take breaks and walk around the block after reading statements and work samples that were so unkind and so unaware of their unkindness that it frightened me. That’s the truth. You don’t know who you’re writing for, so strive to be objective and kind. Lack of consideration for a diverse readership points to a deeper problem.

4. Always read (and reread) the guidelines. Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work,” and I say: Follow the application guidelines so that you can later break the rules in your art. Always follow the application’s rules. Keep them open on your desktop as you write. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the granting organization or residency program and ask about their application’s exact wording. In serving on juries, I’ve seen many good projects denied funding on a technicality.

First of all, you want to make sure that you’re applying for the right opportunity, particularly as an applicant for new works grants and artist residencies. An application might state something like “these grants support the development of new works” or “this residency supports the public performance and distribution of new works.” The opportunities may seem similar, but in practice, they apply to artworks in different phases of completion. Development is considered a completely separate phase from performance and distribution. Know where you’re at in your creative process and make sure you’re applying for the appropriate opportunity.

Sometimes success is all about timing. Let’s say you apply for a new-works grant with a project that’s too early in the idea-generation phase, without providing work samples directly from the project. The grant panel may not be able to evaluate the impact of your project because the description will be too basic and your samples, excerpted from other works, won’t apply to that particular concept. On the other hand, if you’re too late in the process—for example, the project you’re proposing already has a publisher or the play has been staged in public in some capacity—the jury may feel that this project already has support and will reserve support for other, newer projects. Your goal is to describe your concept clearly; to provide appropriate samples and a reason why your concept is important at this point in time, along with a concrete plan for how the work will appear in the world; and to apply for support at the right moment. It’s a subtle balance. Many artists and writers don’t realize that the success of an application is sometimes a panel’s preference for projects in a certain development phase and how that phase is situated in the current moment. These fine details are usually outlined in the guidelines, which must be addressed down to the very last detail.

Stay true to your work, objective in your vision, and close to the application guidelines, and you’ll be sure to discover something new about your process and be one step closer to finding funding.