take pART: Cultural Participation and Community Engagement Grants support arts activities offered by arts organizations and community service organizations with continuing arts programs, as well as small semi-professional and professional arts organizations, and artists seeking to secure City support for specific arts activities, rather than general operating support.
Donor Name: City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs
State: California
City: San Jose
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 01/24/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
take pART Grants are intended to serve as partial support for arts activities, with awards no more than half of a granted project’s budget and usually significantly less. take pART Grants are intended to support one project or program per organization. All applicants are highly encouraged to include the full costs of the project or program in the budget section, including all administrative costs, overhead, insurance costs, facilities, artists, marketing, and all other operational and production costs born by the program or project.
take pART: Cultural Participation and Community Engagement Grantstake pART Grants support three guiding principles of Cultural Connection, San José’s plan for cultural development in the coming decade:
- Cultural Participation: Supporting residents’ personal, active participation in arts and culture.
- Cultural Pluralism: Using culture as a connector and fostering a “cultural commons” through arts and culture.
- Public Value of the Arts: Using personally meaningful arts experiences to help achieve community goals and create a better San José.
take pART Grants are intended to encourage:
- Opportunities for public participation in arts and cultural activities;
- Life-long arts and cultural education programs outside the school setting;
- Expressions of culturally specific traditions of San Jose’s diverse population;
- Opportunities to experience and engage in the arts in neighborhood and community settings; and
- Arts programs that serve the needs of the clients of health and social service institutions.
Funding Information
Groups may submit take pART grant requests between $2,500 to $25,000.
Grant Period
July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026.
Eligible Activities
Types of activities that grants may support include, but are not limited to:
- Creative expression opportunities for San Jose residents who are not professional artists, through participation in the making and presentation of works of dance, literary arts, media and new media arts, music, theater, visual arts, and other art forms;
- Activities, in any arts discipline, that express the cultural values or heritage of culturally specific communities that make up the city of San José, especially communities that are economically underserved and communities that lack access to formal/conventional arts programs and/or arts venues;
- Arts programs, or individual arts projects, of small groups of artists who have organized to produce or exhibit work for public presentation in San José;
- Opportunities for the public to enjoy arts activities in San José neighborhood venues, such as community centers, libraries, community halls, and other non-traditional settings outside the downtown core;
- Single activities and extended projects that provide arts and cultural education opportunities for youth, special populations, or the community at large in neighborhood, community, and institutional care settings. Such projects may include, but are not limited to, professional artists teaching in institutional-care settings, training programs for student or apprentice artists, and projects that introduce people to the arts of any culture.
Eligibility Criteria
Applications that are complete and submitted by the deadline will be accepted from groups that meet all the following conditions:
- The group has a principal place of operations in San José.
- Exception: A group that does not maintain a central place of business and consistently has had annual budgets below $150,000 can qualify if they offer a majority of their programming in San José.
- The group has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status or is the sponsored project of a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor.
- The group, in its current form, has at least a one-year history of providing arts programs in San José venues (venues must be accessible to people with disabilities.)
- The group a) is not a division/department within the City of San José; b) did not submit a FY 2024-2025 Festival, Parade and Celebration Grant application for the project; and c) will not submit a FY 2025-2026 Operating Grant application.
- The group is in compliance with requirements pertaining to any previous grant it has received through the Office of Cultural Affairs.
For more information, visit City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs.
