Every year, the Brandeis Division of Creative Arts gives grants to support original creative work by Brandeis students, staff and faculty for the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts. Proposals for works of music, theater, performance, and visual art are all welcome, and interdisciplinary proposals are especially encouraged.

Grants range from $50 to $500 and are used for materials and services needed for your project. 

The next Festival of the Arts takes place April 25 through May 1, 2020. The grant application is online. Completed applications are due Jan. 20, 2020. You may also submit an early interest form by Dec. 16, 2019 to receive feedback on your proposal.

A grant is not necessary to participate in the Festival. Here's how you can still participate:

1. Apply to give a 20-minute performance on the afternoon of Sunday, April 26, 2020 in select locations on lower campus. Performances need to be family friendly and require minimal technical support.
2. Are you producing your own event? Arts events on campus that take place on campus between April 25 through May 1, 2020 will be considered for inclusion in official Festival publicity.

Festival Theme

The theme of the 2020 festival is ROOTS AND ROUTES. We are looking for proposals that engage with:

• Tradition
• Uprooting
• Movement toward the unknown
• Migration
• Dissolving, expanding, or shifting boundaries

Questions you might ask yourself:

• What overlapping trajectories or counter-movements interest you?
• What are the forces that uproot?
• What is centering or grounding?
• What happens when ideas take root to make space for change?

The phrase “roots and routes” comes from critical theory of the African diaspora. How might the arts respond to understanding the dispersal and rupture of African-descended people?

Dream big and be ready to rethink and refine. We want to see you succeed, and the most successful projects in the past have been the ones that went through a good deal of thoughtful revision.

Resources

• Talk with your professors and with the Brandeis Arts Engagement team, Ingrid Schorr and Ingrid Pabon, about your proposal.

• Review the grant guidelines and advice from previous grant recipients.

• Prepare a preliminary budget by researching the materials and services you anticipate needing. The Arts Engagement team, your professors, or your department staff can be helpful here!

• Read the list of last year's grant recipients and the Festival of the Arts report.

• Talk to potential collaborators, from Brandeis or elsewhere.