Federal Art Funding Done Right

 In the 1960's Major League Baseball expanded and added back another New York team, the New York Mets.  Needless to say as an expansion team the talent was razor thin and their colorful and entertaining coach Casey Stengel quipped, "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?"

That sense of humor is not lost on any artist attempting to locate and apply for a arts grant or other funding opportunity from the State of CT, the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), and to some degree the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Aside from the clusterMuck of confusing and misleading website and - cough- "portal" interface problems, it is a full time chore for anyone who is not already associated with a mainstream arts organization, a University, or otherwise inside track to simply navigate, recipe-wise, 'how do I apply for the damned thing and how can I be sure my application will be treated fairly'?

I'm chipping away at making sense of this stuff in a series of essays and inquiries that I hope will concise road map that any artist can follow.

What has caught my attention and has answered the question of "Can the Federal government do a good and truly honest job of creating opportunities for creatives whose instructions are reasonable, whose solicitations are free of cognitive and political bias, and who advocate and practice an even handed evaluation process?"

The improbable answer is YES.

In researching arts funding you will inevitably encounter cross references to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sometimes that cross-reference is misguided.  In a couple of cases, an arts administrator or political advocate for funding wants to co-opt or deflect responsibility for funding something having to do with writing or related matter for funding as a Humanities project. NEA and NEH serve two autonomous and unique cohorts that only co-incidentally share some of the same creative juices that applicants are looking to exercise.

On the NEH website there's a webinar that's been recorded with tons of very useful, specifics about who the Humanities serve and what the scope of that stuff is as this slide shows;

Taken at face value, artists such as myself can claim some of that territory as our own but what NEH makes clear throughout their material is that the generation of art is out of scope - that stuff belonging to the responsibility of the NEA, NGOs, and private parties

Again, as an artist, I find comfort in this kind of clarity. This means that funding opportunities for stuff I do or hope to do is in the scope of the NEA and not here.  HOWEVER, my expectation as an artist is that everything that applies to the Humanities in terms of an expected field of neutrality WILL apply at the NEA.

Let's compare and contrast what i found in the NEA budget and performance plan:

Wait, WHAT?

I'm going to analyze the NEA's malfeasance in this regard in a separate essay. Obviously, every single form of psychological intimidation appears to be "the plan" at the NEA.

But this post is about doing it right and for the sake providing how its done right let me provide additional references and links from NEH that conclusively prove that government can work responsibly and fiscally soundly.

The NEH grants webpage is a breath of fresh air - lots of truly well-developed recipes for successfully submitting an application for the funding you hope will be chosen.

The YouTube channel for NEHgov is rich with additional videos that make life easier for funding applicants.

see: Connecticut Humanities Grants