With the launch of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 50th anniversary on September 29, Chairman Jane Chu announced the initiative Creativity Connects. This initiative will show how the arts are central to the country’s creativity ecosystem, investigate how support systems for the arts have changed, explore how the arts connect with other industries, and invest in innovative projects to spark new ideas for the arts field.
An important component of this initiative is a pilot grant opportunity that will support partnerships between nonprofit arts organizations and organizations from non-arts sectors which include, but are not limited to, business, education, environment, faith, finance, food, health, law, science, and technology. These Art Works: Creativity Connects grants will seek to benefit the arts and non-arts sectors by demonstrating the value of working with the arts; supporting the infrastructure for the arts to work in new ways with new sectors; building bridges that create new relationships and constituencies; and creating innovative partnership projects to advance common goals.
Visit arts.gov for information about these grants. Please note that an organization that submits an application to Art Works: Creativity Connects is still eligible to submit an application to other National Endowment for the Arts categories including other areas of Art Works and Challenge America. In each case, the request must be for a distinctly different project from the other application.
Questions should be directed to CreativityConnectsGrants@arts.gov. The application deadline is March 3, 2016 and a webinar about applying for these grants will take place on January 27.