Jazz artists, take your music to places it’s never been. Jazz Road Tours offer grants of up to $15,000 to develop tours into communities across the country.
Donor Name: South Arts
State: All States
County: All Counties
Territory: American Samoa, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and U.S. Virgin Islands
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 12/01/2022
Size of the Grant: $5,000 to $15,000
Details:
Jazz Road Tours supports small, three- to six-site tours at an array of venue types, often in rural communities and other areas traditionally underserved by the genre.
This artist-centric grant program—designed to support approximately 50 tours each year—is made possible with funds from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from the Mellon Foundation.
Program Priorities
- Providing jazz artists financial assistance for performances/tours that increases their ability to earn income by connecting with a diversity of communities in traditional and non-traditional venues
- Giving artists business development tools to advance their careers beyond subsidies and grants. The goals are rooted in equitable pay and artist-centric programming as core values. South Arts believes that artists should receive fair pay for their time, work, and expertise, and that allowing artists (as opposed to venues/agents) to control engagements offers a unique level of creative autonomy and ownership; these goals are discussed below as well as in the Supplemental Questions document uploaded with this application.
Funding Information
Grant amounts generally range from $5,000 to $15,000.
Eligibility Criteria
Only individual artists (as an individual, an artist-led nonprofit organization, or an artist-led corporation) may apply to this program. An eligible artist is:
- A professional jazz artist, working solo or working with a composer-led or collective jazz ensemble which consists of 2-10 musicians;
- Age 18 or over and not currently a full-time student;
- Based in the U.S. or its territories, and is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident (non-residents may participate in a tour, but not be paid with Jazz Road Tours funds)
Please note that previous Jazz Road Tours grantees are only able to reapply for tours that take place at least one year from the previous grant’s project end date. A key Jazz Road Tours objective is to award a large and diverse pool of artists across the U.S. for new tour experiences.
Eligible Tours
- Eligible tour routing will span three to six sites on contiguous dates.
- Funds are for artists to stay on the road and not return home. Funds are not for one-offs. Flexibility is possible around three-day spreads in between dates, or to avoid shows on Monday/Tuesday (slow evenings), if the band remains on the road.
- The tour must reach three to six sites, and either cover a total distance of at least 250 miles or more or reach at least one site which is 250 miles from the applicant’s home base.
- Tours must occur within the designated dates for each grant cycle.
- Eligible tour dates must take place in the U.S. or its territories.
- Tours can be within one state, cross state-lines, and/or travel to multiple regions.
- The tour request can be for a portion of a larger tour, so long as all dates are in the U.S. or its territories.
- Engagements must be for public performances.
- Shows can require admissions, suggested door amounts, or be free.
- Engagements can be for multiple nights so long as at least three separate venues are included in the application.
- Each venue listed on the tour must demonstrate their commitment to the engagement by providing a signed Offer Letter that you will be asked to upload for each engagement.
- All presenters—regardless of size or financial contribution to the tour—are expected to make significant efforts in promotion and/or create other opportunities to attract new audiences and fill rooms.
For more information, visit South Arts.
