SPACE is now accepting online applications for 2021–22 Kindling Fund program support grants. Applications are due Sunday, November 7, by 11:50PM, via Submittable.com.
For more information about past grantees, including eligibility guidelines and FAQ, download our 5 Years of the Kindling Fund publication (PDF).
Kindling Fund 2021–22
For 2021, SPACE is offering $5000 flat program support grants to Maine-based artist collectives, exhibition/curatorial platforms, web projects, art writing/publishing, or project based initiatives that support multiple visual artists through the pandemic. This is different than the project-based grants that SPACE has administered in the pre-pandemic times.
The Kindling Fund supports artist-organized work that engage audiences and incorporate the visual arts in inventive and meaningful ways. With a focus on risk and experimentation, successful projects value unconventional engagement, critical dialogue, collaboration, and create new models for presenting artists’ work. The Kindling Fund is administered by SPACE as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts’ Regional Regranting Program. Funds support a variety of publicly accessible projects with a strong interest in alternative spaces, pioneering practices, and site-specific presentations that do not fit in established institutions or conventional venues.
To accommodate the needs of sustaining work during the pandemic, applicants for 2021 will not be asked to present a new project but instead tell us about the work they have been doing to create equitable and engaging opportunities for visual artists in Maine. SPACE established the Kindling Fund granting program in 2014, responding to the needs of individual artists across the state and Maine’s arts community at large. These are grants made to individual artists and arts organizers; commercially-focused projects and nonprofit organizations are not eligible.
Applicant Assessment Criteria
- Artistic excellence and experimentation.
- Financial need for program support during the pandemic, or the capacity to support artistic opportunity for multiple working artists in the state of Maine in the year ahead.
- Ensuring our final grantees reflect SPACE’s commitment to statewide geographic equity, accessibility to the arts in communities across the state, and a diversity of artistic perspectives.
Information Sessions
If you have never applied before, need support with grant proposals, or want to hear about the changing eligibility requirements for this year’s Kindling Fund, we strongly recommend you consider joining us at one of our virtual information sessions:
- Virtual Information Session 1
Sunday, October 24, 7:00PM, Zoom - Virtual Information Session 2
Wednesday, November 2, 5:30PM, Zoom*
(Please note date change) - Virtual Peer Review
Saturday, November 6, 12:00PM, Zoom
For more information please email director@space538.org.
