The Neighborhood and Downtown Activation Grant supports community-focused arts and cultural activations in public spaces.
Donor Name: City of Boston
State: Massachusetts
City: Boston
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/26/2024
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: 3 Years
Details:
The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s (MOAC) believes artists have a crucial role in creating a thriving, healthy community for all and that everyone should have access to creative expression through lifelong arts programming across all Boston neighborhoods. The Neighborhood and Downtown Activation Grant is a program to support community-focused arts, cultural, and creative activations in public spaces that foster joy and strengthen community wellbeing across Boston neighborhoods.
What is a Creative Activation?
Specific to this grant, a creative activation is an arts, cultural, and/or creative experience in a publicly accessible space that imagines and explores new possible uses for that space. This includes experiences that:
- Result in permanent or temporary changes to the physical, social, and/or atmospheric components of the space.
- Center the social fabric, traditions, norms, and conversations happening within the community, highlighting its existing strengths and history.
- Demonstrate many kinds of creative elements, cultural traditions, artistic disciplines, artists and community engagement processes.
- Are designed, planned, and executed in partnership with, and to benefit, residents, local organizations, business owners, and workers within and surrounding the space.
This grant is open to both existing creative activations that are ongoing and new activations that are being launched for the first time. General examples of creative activations include (but are not limited to): performance art, community celebrations, a community-led stage, interactive theater productions, film screenings with conversation, cultural festivals, arts and cultural markets, community dialogues that center the arts, a digital arts festival, and more.
Considerations and Priorities
Projects that include some or all of the these elements will be prioritized:
- Location:
- Priority will be given to activations that occur or include the following neighborhoods: Mattapan, Roxbury, Dorchester, Hyde Park, East Boston, and Chinatown.
- Public participation / co-creation:
- Going beyond the public as an audience and strategically building opportunities for the public to contribute to the vision, creation, and enjoyment of the activation.
- Youth participation and training:
- Integrating outcomes for young people (ages 14 to 24) into the activation, facilitating opportunities for young people to inform and lead work, including opportunities to learn specific skills or gain career exposure.
- Partnerships and Collaborations:
- Authentic partnerships and collaboration that bring communities that are segregated due to race, income, or geographic boundaries, into conversation and cross-neighborhood collaboration with each other.
- Applications from for-profit organizations that are partnered with non-profits, artists, or community groups will have priority over applications from for-profit organizations that do not have local non-profit partners.
Funding Information
Total Funds available: Up to $5 million
- Cultural Festival: $5,000, one time grant
- Small-Scale Activation: Less than $20,000, one time grant
- Mid-Scale Activation: Less than $50,000, one time grant
- Large-Scale Activation: $50,000 – $100,000, one time grant and multiyear up to 2 years
- Multiyear Activation: $100,000 – $200,000 multiyear up to 3 years.
Project Requirements
- All projects and related programming are located in the City of Boston and are free and open to the public
- Have a concrete location(s) in which the activations will take place, even if those places are not yet confirmed. Project ideas that list entire neighborhoods will not be considered.
- Demonstrate strong alignment with MOAC’s definition of creative activation as an arts, cultural, and/or creative experience in a publicly accessible space that imagines and explores new possible uses for that space. This includes experiences that:
- Result in permanent or temporary changes to the physical, social, and/or atmospheric components of the space.
- Center the social fabric, traditions, and norms of the community, highlighting its existing strengths and history.
- Demonstrate many kinds of creative elements, cultural traditions, artistic disciplines, artists and community engagement processes.
- Are designed, planned, and executed in partnership with, and to benefit, residents, local organizations, business owners, and workers within and surrounding the space.
- All events and programs funded by the Neighborhood and Downtown Activation Grant are required to be accessible for persons with disabilities under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including additional accommodations to be made available upon request of any person who requires alternately formatted materials, auxiliary aids, or other accommodations.
- Grant recipients will work with MOAC on an evaluation plan as a part of the grant agreement, to document and communicate the impact of the program to the public.
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants need to meet all of the following criteria to be eligible:
- Be an individual, non profit organization, collective, fiscally sponsored group, or business working in partnership with community partners
- Be Boston residents or demonstrate that their project is led by partners and/or artists who are Boston residents
- Have a direct relationship to the community or area in which the activation or program is taking place. This can include being from that community, having spent a significant amount of time working and building relationships in that place, etc.
For more information, visit City of Boston.
