The Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative has a new grant program, and will be accepting applications until February 28, 2010. The Direct-to-Artists Grants will award money to individual artists or collaborative groups living and working in Santa Barbara, to fund their projects. The SB Arts Collaborative has split the awards into four artistic categories: visual arts, performing arts, literary arts, and film and multimedia arts.
Each category will accept two winners and each winner will be given up to $1500. To apply, each artist must be registered with the SB Arts Collaborative website, which is designed as a forum for artists within Santa Barbara to communicate and collaborate on topics relating to their artwork.
Rod Hare, chair of SB Arts Collaborative, said that the Collaborative has two priorities for serving the artists of Santa Barbara: to facilitate collaboration among all types of art and artists, and to create sustainable funding for the arts. The grants program is only one way that the Collaborative will connect with the Santa Barbara community.
Ginny Brush, executive director of the Santa Barbara Arts Commission and co-volunteer with Hare of the Collaborative, stated that one of the reasons for starting SB Arts Collaborative was to engage the community in the work of local artists, and to bring a focus back to art that is created in Santa Barbara.
Brush explained that the grant applications should show the strength of the artist’s vision and the strong points within the artist’s work. The art does not have to include a socially conscious element. The panel of judges, professional artists working in the Santa Barbara community, will judge each category throughout March. The winners will be announced at the Annual Arts Symposium on April 16 at the Cabrillo Arts Pavilion.
The SB Arts collaborative began in 2007 as an offshoot of the Annual Arts Symposium. Hare emphasized the significance of announcing the winners at the event as a marker of how much it has accomplished in three years.
All applications will be reviewed digitally; artists must upload their work as a digital file (either jpeg, mpeg, or text file). The applications are available online at sbartscollaborative.org.