Cost Share and Matching Funds: Grants cannot exceed 50% of the total cost of the project. All grants require a nonfederal match of at least 1 to 1. For example, if an organization receives a $10,000 grant, the total eligible project costs must be at least $20,000 and the organization must provide at least $10,000 toward the project from nonfederal sources.
NEA will host an "Our Town: How to Apply" webinar on Wednesday, June 24, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. EST. To register click here.
Our Town is the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program. Through project-based funding, Our Town support projects that integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes. Successful Our Town projects ultimately lay the groundwork for systemic changes that sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into local strategies for strengthening communities. These projects require a partnership between a local government entity and nonprofit organization, one of which must be a cultural organization; and should engage in partnership with other sectors (such as agriculture and food, economic development, education and youth, environment and energy, health, housing, public safety, transportation, and workforce development). Matching grants range from $25,000 to $200,000, with a minimum cost share/match equal to the grant amount.
FY 2020 marks the 10 year anniversary of the Our Town program. NEA is looking for projects that reflect a new and catalytic way of working, and demonstrate the potential for sustained support and recognition for arts, design, and cultural strategies as integral to every phase of community development.
Grants generally will range from $10,000 to $100,000. No grants will be made below $10,000. Grants of $100,000 or more will be made only in rare instances, and only for projects that we determine demonstrate exceptional national or regional significance and impact. In the past few years, well over half of the agency's grants have been for amounts less than $25,000.
Projects
NEA encourages applications for artistically excellent projects that:
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Bring new attention to or elevate key community assets and issues, voices of residents, local history, or cultural infrastructure.
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Inject new or additional energy, resources, activity, people, or enthusiasm into a place, community issue, or local economy.
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Envision new possibilities for a community or place - a new future, a new way of overcoming a challenge, or approaching problem-solving.
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Connect communities, people, places, and economic opportunity via physical spaces or new relationships.
The National Endowment for the Arts plans to support a variety of projects across the country in urban, rural, and tribal communities of all sizes.
Project Types
Our Town projects must integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthening communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes. Projects may include activities such as:
Arts Engagement:
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Artist residency: A program designed to strategically connect artists with the opportunity to bring their creative skill sets to non-arts institutions, including residencies in government offices, businesses, or other institutions.
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Arts festivals: Public events that gather people, often in public space or otherwise unexpected places, to showcase talent and exchange culture.
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Community co-creation of art: The process of engaging stakeholders to participate or collaborate alongside artists/designers in conceiving, designing, or fabricating a work or works of art.
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Performances: Presentations of a live art work (e.g., music, theater, dance, media).
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Public art: A work of art that is conceived for a particular place or community, with the intention of being broadly accessible, and often involving community members in the process of developing, selecting, or executing the work.
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Temporary public art: A work of art that is conceived for a particular place or community and meant for display over a finite period of time, with the intention of being broadly accessible and often involving community members in developing, selecting, or executing the work.
Cultural Planning:
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Cultural planning: The process of identifying and leveraging a community's cultural resources and decision-making (e.g., creating a cultural plan, or integrating plans and policies around arts and culture as part of a city master planning process).
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Cultural district planning: The process of convening stakeholders to identify a specific geography with unique potential for community and/or economic development based on cultural assets (e.g., through designation, branding, policy, plans, or other means).
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Creative asset mapping: The process of identifying the people, places, physical infrastructure, institutions, and customs that hold meaningful aesthetics, historical, and/or economic value that make a place unique.
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Public art planning: The process of developing community-wide strategies and/or policies that guide and support commissioning, installing, and maintaining works of public art and/or temporary public art.
Design:
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Artist/designer-facilitated community planning: Artists/designers leading or partnering in the creative processes of visioning, and for solutions to community issues.
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Design of artist space: Design processes to support the creation of dedicated spaces for artists to live and/or to produce, exhibit, or sell their work.
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Design of cultural facilities: Design processes to support the creation of a dedicated building or space for creating and/or showcasing arts and culture.
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Public space design: The process of designing elements of public infrastructure, or spaces where people congregate (e.g., parks, plazas, landscapes, neighborhoods, districts, infrastructure, and artist-produced elements of streetscapes).
Artist and Creative Industry Support:
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Creative business development: Programs or services that support entrepreneurs and businesses in the creative industries, or help cultivate strong infrastructure for establishing and developing creative businesses.
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Professional artist development: Programs or services that support artists professionally, such as through skill development or accessing markets and capital.
Required Partnerships
A key to the success of creative placemaking is involving the arts in partnership with committed governmental, nonprofit, and private sector leadership. All applications must demonstrate a partnership that will provide leadership for the project. These partnerships must involve two primary partners, as defined by these guidelines:
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Nonprofit organization
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Local government entity
One of these two primary partners must be a cultural (arts or design) organization. The highest ranking official of the local government is required to submit a formal statement of support designating the project as the one of the up to two applications being submitted for the local government. See "How to Prepare and Submit an Application" for more information.
Additional partners are encouraged and may include an appropriate variety of entities such as arts organizations and artists, design professionals and design centers, state level government agencies, foundations, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, real estate developers, business leaders, community organizations, councils of government, rural or regional planning organizations, transportation agencies, special districts, educational organizations, as well as public and governmental entities; and should engage in partnership with other sectors (such as agriculture and food, economic development, education and youth, environment and energy, health, housing, public safety, transportation, and workforce development).
You may find it helpful to contact your local or regional arts agency as you begin the process of identifying partners within your community.
Strengthening Communities
Through Our Town projects, the National Endowment for the Arts Endowment intends to achieve the following objective: Strengthening Communities: Provide opportunities for the arts to be integrated into the fabric of community life.
Our Town project outcomes may include:
- Economic Change: Economic improvements of individuals, institutions, or the community including local business growth, job creation/labor force participation, professional development/training, prevention of displacement, in-migration, and tourism.
- Physical Change: Physical improvements that occur to the built and natural environment including beautification and/or enhancement of physical environment, new construction, and redevelopment (including arts, culture, and public space).
- Social Change: Improvements to social relationships, civic engagement and community empowerment, and/or amplifying community identity including civic engagement, collective efficacy, social capital, social cohesion, and community attachment.
- Systems Change: Improvements to community capacity to sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into strategies for advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes including partnerships with other sectors, civic and institutional leadership, replication or scaling of innovative projects, long term funding, training programs, and permanent staff positions.
Grant Amounts, Cost Share, and Matching Funds:
NEA anticipates awarding a limited number of grants, subject to the availability of funding. You must request a grant amount at one of the following levels: $25,000, $50,000, $75,000, $100,000, $150,000, or $200,000. NEA will award very few grants at the $200,000 level; these will be only for projects of significant scale and impact. Grants cannot exceed 50% of the total cost of the project. All grants require a nonfederal match of at least 1 to 1. These matching funds may be all cash or a combination of cash and in-kind contributions. You may include in your Project Budget matching funds that are proposed but not yet committed at the time of the application deadline.
NEA reserves the right to limit support of a project to a particular phase(s) or cost(s). All costs included in your Project Budget must be expended during your period of performance. Costs associated with other federal funds, whether direct or indirect (e.g., flow down through a state arts agency), can't be included in your Project Budget. Costs incurred before the earliest project start date of July 1, 2020, can't be included in your budget or match.
Application Limits:
An organization may submit as a lead applicant two applications to Our Town. A partnering organization may serve as a partner on as many applications as they like.
Please view Tips for a Successful Our Town Application webinar. The online storybook 'Exploring Our Town' has illustrative examples of Our Town grant projects and insights into doing creative placemaking for practitioners. You also may download a free publication How to Do Creative Placemaking, and look at additional creative placemaking resources. Applications on projects resulting from Mayors Institute on City Design and Citizens Institute on Rural Design are encouraged.
Interested applicants should send the following documents in sequence in one PDF file (File name: Last name_OurTown_2020 no later than 4:00 p.m. on the internal submission deadline:
- Principal Investigator’s (PI's) names and departmental affiliation
- Co-PI's names and departmental affiliation(s)
- A list of possible participating organizations (if applicable)
- Department Head approval/agreement to match funds
- 2-page current Bio-sketch for all PIs and Co-PIs.
Project Description (no more than two pages) and identify:
The artistic excellence of the project, which includes the following:
- Quality of the artists, arts or design professionals, arts organizations, works of art, or services that the project will involve, as appropriate for the community in which the project takes place. Artistic excellence is evaluated based on the material and work samples submitted with the application. This includes a description of the process and criteria for the selection of artists, design professionals, arts organizations, works of art, or services to ensure artistic excellence; and work samples of selected or proposed artists, design professionals, arts organizations, works of art, or services that demonstrate artistic excellence. See "Prepare Application Material (PDF)" for the material and work samples that are required to ensure and demonstrate artistic excellence.
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Potential to advance local economic, physical, and social outcomes by:
- Bringing new attention to or elevating key community assets and issues, voices of residents, local history, or cultural infrastructure,
- Injecting new or additional energy, resources, activity, people, or enthusiasm into a place, community issue, or local economy,
- Envisioning new possibilities for a community or place - a new future, a new way of overcoming a challenge, or approaching problem-solving, or
- Connecting communities, people, places, and economic opportunity via physical spaces or new relationships.
The artistic merit of the project, which includes the following:
- Potential to ultimately lay the groundwork for systemic changes that sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into strategies for strengthening communities by engaging partners from other sectors (such as agriculture and food, economic development, education and youth, environment and energy, health, housing, public safety, transportation, and workforce development).
- Potential to support artists, design professionals, and arts organizations by integrating the arts and design into the fabric of civic life.
- Level of community engagement in planning for and participating in the project.
- Strength of the partnership between required local and nonprofit partners, as well as engagement of the private and public sectors.
- Where appropriate, potential to reach underserved populations such as those whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited.
- Ability to carry out the project based on such factors as the appropriateness of the budget, the quality and clarity of the project goals and design, the resources involved, and the qualifications of the project’s personnel.
- Appropriateness of the project to the partners' missions and the community in which the project will take place.
- Appropriateness of the proposed performance measurements and their ability to demonstrate that project activities are advancing local physical, economic, and/or social outcomes, including, as appropriate, plans for documentation and evaluation of the overall project results.
Formatting Guidelines and Page Limit:
- Font/size: Times New Roman (12 pt.)
- Document margins: 1.0” (top, bottom, left and right)
- Standard paper size (8 ½” x 11)
Questions concerning the limited submissions process may be submitted to limitedsubs@psu.edu.