Artist Opportunities

The Actors Fund provides services and financial support to entertainment professionals facing personal or work-related problems. It is also a conduit for emergency financial assistance in times of pressing need or in response to catastrophic events.

The Artists’ Fellowship provides emergency aid to professional fine artists and their families in times of sickness, natural disaster, bereavement or unexpected extreme hardship. At this time, we are temporarily limiting relief and assistance applications to those qualified applicants who are dealing with immediate MEDICAL emergencies and their aftermaths. 

Since 1917, the Authors League Fund has helped professional authors, journalists, poets, and dramatists who find themselves in financial need because of medical or health-related problems, temporary loss of income, or other misfortune. Most of those we help suffer severe health problems but have inadequate insurance; some face eviction; many are older writers whose income has ceased through no fault of their own. The Fund exists to help professional writers continue their careers with dignity by providing no-strings-attached “loans” to pay for pressing expenses. Repayment of this emergency support is not required.

The Chatham Artist & Arts-Worker Relief Effort (CAARE) is available to performing, visual, or literary artists or arts-workers living in Chatham County, NC – and in need of financial assistance due to COVID-19 cancellations and closures. (For the purpose of CAARE, we define arts-worker as someone who earns some part of their income in the arts by making arts projects possible, including exhibition managers, artist managers, stage managers, arts nonprofit administrators, sound technicians, etc.)

Decisions will be made each Thursday, beginning April 9. Applications must be received by Tuesday at 4:59 p.m. to be considered by the CAARE committee for that week’s funding. Applications received after Tuesday at 5 p.m. will be reviewed the following week. Disbursements will be made weekly.

As artists attempt to maintain a sense of "business as usual" when things are anything but usual, Rhonda Wheatley discusses lessons in healing and wellness to manage the growing isolation, anxiety, and uncertainty we are all facing during this recorded workshop (via YouTube). Wheatley closes with a guided meditation.

If you're thinking about livestreaming for the first time during COVID-19, it can be hard to know where to start. Yara Travieso and Brighid Greene suggest using livestreaming less as a final product, and more as a way to continue a creative practice. In this recorded workshop (via YouTube), they assess different platforms and what to know when just getting started.
 

DGF provides emergency financial assistance to individual playwrights, composers, lyricists, and bookwriters in dire need of funds due to severe hardship or unexpected illness.

Do you have an unanticipated opportunity to present your work? Did you incur an unexpected expense that you didn’t budget for? The Foundation for Contemporary Arts offers Emergency Grants between $500 and $3,000 for artists. They review applications once a month, so you can quickly take advantage of momentum or solve any budget errors. Rolling deadline.

The Blues Foundation established the HART Fund (Handy Artists Relief Trust) for Blues musicians and their families in financial need due to a broad range of health concerns. The Fund provides for acute, chronic and preventive medical and dental care as well as funeral and burial expenses. Throughout the year at various events the HART Fund provides free health screenings for musicians, with services including but not limited to checking blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, prostate cancer, Hep C, anemia, thyroid, kidney and liver testing via blood work. 

The Max’s Kansas City project provides emergency funding and resources to professionals in the creative arts.

The Rauschenberg Dancer Emergency Grants program provides one-time grants of up to $5,000 to professional dancers in need across the country, who have a dire financial emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is administered by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and funded by Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Cycle 1 is due on Jan 7, 2022. For details on Cycle 2 (due on March 22) please click HERE. A third cycle will be administered before June 2022, please check back HERE for details. 

Arts NC joined with the NC Arts Education Association, NC Dance Education Organization, NC Music Education Association, NC Theatre Arts Educators and NC Theatre Conference to produce a guide, Recommendations for Arts Educators as North Carolina Reopens Schools, as well as a recorded webinar.

The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Grant program is intended to provide interim financial assistance to qualified painters, printmakers, and sculptors whose needs are the result of an unforeseen, catastrophic incident, and who lack the resources to meet that situation. Each grant is given as one-time assistance for a specific emergency, examples of which are fire, flood, or emergency medical need. Deadline: Open.

Allies in Arts is offering SOS grants to BIPOC artists. They are small but immediately available. Just send your website or IG of your artwork, and they’ll do the application for you.

South Arts invites emerging and mid-career jazz artists to take your music to places it's never been and apply for Jazz Road Tours grants. Jazz Road Tours offer grants of up to $15,000 to develop tours into communities across the country.

As we advance Southern vitality through the arts, South Arts offers a limited number of Professional Development and Artistic Planning grants to nonprofit performing, visual, media/film, multidisciplinary and literary arts presenting organizations in our nine-state region with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Funding up to $1,000 is available to support the professional development needs of Southern presenters/programmers/curators, strengthen program design, and increase organizational capacity. For the purposes of these guidelines, “presenters” are defined as organizations that present or host guest artists for engagements in their communities. These grants are very limited and awarded on a first-come/first-served basis, so early submission is encouraged. A dollar-for-dollar cash match is a requirement. Rolling deadline.

The RJE Sprout Fund was established in 2021 to support artists across the nation with direct funds in order to provide financial means to projects that will be completed within the next 12 months. All artists are encouraged to apply – formally trained, self-taught, and those whose creative work falls outside of traditional forms of art. Artists are also encouraged to apply for funds for projects that involve their communities such as art classes, therapy, outreach, and non-traditional projects.

Seeking poetry submissions for online poetry journal. Publication. 

Bear Review is a biannual journal of poetry, art and micro prose based in Kansas City. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Turnaround time is fast. All published writing is automatically considered for an annual editor's prize which includes an honorarium and interview. The first editor's prize will be judged this fall and will consider work from this issue and the fall issue. Submit up to five original, previously unpublished poems or micro prose pieces (fiction or nonfiction, 500 words or fewer). Rolling deadline.

The literary journal Inch is looking for flash fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Rolling deadline.

The Del Shores Foundation 2021 Writers Search is now open to submissions from Southern LGBTQ+ playwrights and screenwriters.

Gibson House Press seeks fiction manuscripts for their 2023 list.

Hermit Feathers Press accepts full-length poetry manuscripts on an ongoing basis. Manuscripts should be introduced via query. Rolling deadline.

Seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for publication. Cash awards. Rolling deadline.

The Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers' Network, encourages the creation of lasting nonfiction that is outside the realm of conventional journalism and has relevance to North Carolinians and is now open for submissions.

Seeking entries for the Emerging Playwright Award. Cash award. Rolling deadline.

Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center invites emerging and established artists to submit original artworks to the juried exhibition 'Adorned: Inspired by Fabric and Fashion'. This is a national juried exhibition. All media and performance welcome; small to large-scale works; cash awards.

Grey Cube Gallery proudly presents the first "Grey" online art contest for the month of December. Artists from around the world are welcome to submit. Only the works of art created in black, white and or shades of grey will be accepted. All visual art mediums (except video and sound) are allowed. 

FALL 2021 OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS — Innovate Grant awards (2) $550.00 grants each quarter, to one Visual Artist and one Photographer. In addition to receiving a grant award, winners will be featured and recognized on our website and join a growing community of vibrant and talented artists.

American Dance Festival is accepting submissions for their annual festival, Movies By Movers, of dance films between 1-15 minutes in three different categories: students, professionals, and NC-based artists. Films can be any of the following genres: screendance, documentary, experimental, and narrative. All films must have a strong movement component to be considered.

The Rooted in Rights Blog is a platform dedicated to amplifying the authentic perspectives of disabled writers. They invite you to pitch articles and op-eds on disability rights topics. Rolling deadline.

Awesome Disability is a chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a global micro-granting community. How it works - Every month, people with awesome ideas submit a grant application. The winner is given $1000, no strings attached. Submit your application by July 15 to be considered for November's grant. Ongoing, rolling deadline.

Contemporary Art Room Gallery is proud to announce their 2nd “Trees & Fields” Online Art Competition for the month of December 2021. The gallery invites artists and photographers to submit their best artworks related with the theme Trees & Fields (forests, farmlands, meadows, savannas).

This program is a weekly online performance featuring Durham musicians. Tune in to the @downtownDurham Facebook page at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays to experience some of what you love about Durham and connect, virtually, to the downtown Durham community. 

Accepting exhibition proposals for gallery space. Honorarium and non-cash awards. 

Resource: Allied Media Projects cultivates media strategies for a more just, creative and collaborative world. Serving a network of media makers, artists, educators, and technologists working for social justice, AMP holds an annual conference and supports individual artists by offering fiscal sponsorship and financial management.

Art World Conference is a series of actionable, inclusive workshops and events, both in-person and online, focused on business and financial health to build and sustain careers in the arts. We believe financial health and sustainability for cultural producers is a social justice issue.

Programming includes panel discussions and in-depth workshops addressing many of the unique opportunities and challenges faced by visual artists, freelancers, and arts professionals. Topics range from sales, marketing, grants, taxes, managing debt, building credit, investing, and legal issues, to defining and asserting value, solidarity, new technologies, legacy planning, and growing and sustaining community. The emphasis of all programming is on personal and professional development and empowerment.

Resource: Arts + Public Life, an initiative of UChicago Arts, builds creative connections on Chicago's South Side through artist residencies, arts education, and artist-led projects and events.

Offering professional development courses through their podcasts, Thriving Artist.

Arts Access and VAE invites artists to join the Disabled Artists/Artists with Disabilities Group every Thursday at 7pm. Open to all disabilities and artforms, this group will share resources and provide mutual support, constructive criticism, and informal instruction.

Emerging Leaders of Color, presented by South Arts and its colleague Regional Arts Organization WESTAF (Western States Arts Federation) that provides tools, continued learning opportunities and a network to early to mid-career arts administrators of color who seek to move into leadership positions in the arts and culture sector

Resource: Knight Foundation works with partners who create or present art that engages, educates and delights residents in ways that reflect the rich diversity and identity of each community. The foundation endeavors to make art integral to communities by funding anchor institutions seeking wider audiences and by supporting grassroots initiatives of individual artists and organizations.

Resource: The Loveland CreatorSpace is a non-profit, members-funded and -operated, cooperative “makerspace” for engineers, artists, musicians and tinkerers of all kinds. Like a traditional “hackerspace”, the primary
objective of LCS is to provide a community-driven work shop that offers its members access to tools, machinery and classes to help promote creative engineering in Loveland and Northern Colorado.

Offering business and marketing courses with some specifically for artists.

The North Carolina Potters Conference is slated for March 3-6, 2022. The conference is hosted by the North Carolina Pottery Center and will highlight traditional and contemporary Korean potters, techniques, and styles and their influence on pottery in North Carolina.

As an artist or arts administrator, you have to balance a lot of different plates, from HR to shipping work, to collaborating and accounting. It can get overwhelming.

Triangle ArtWorks has partnered with artist, marketer, and project manager extraordinaire Mikki Stith to bring you a FREE video series on how to integrate project management concepts into your career so you can focus on making art.

Springboard’s Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists is a professional development curriculum designed to teach business skills to artists in all disciplines.

Resource: The Sustainable Arts Foundation is a non-profit foundation supporting artists and writers with families whose mission is to provide financial awards to parents pursuing creative work.

Offering online courses and certificate program in cultural planning and development. Fees.

Resource: Working Artists and the Greater Economy is a New York-based activist organization whose mission is to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract their labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.

Sculpture artists are invited to participate in the Town of Apex’s second annual outdoor sculpture show, Apex Sculpture Walk, scheduled for April 2022- March 2023.

The DownEast National Juried Sculpture Exhibition is located in Pitt County, North Carolina. The exhibition has two components: a month-long indoor exhibition and a year-long outdoor exhibition. The DownEast outdoor sculpture exhibition is a joint exhibition among Pitt County Arts Council at Emerge, ECU Student Activities Board, City of Greenville, Town of Winterville, Town of Farmville, Wahl-Coates Elementary School for the Arts, and the Greenville Museum of Art.

Outdoor Exhbition submissions due by Nov 20, 2021.

Indoor Exhibition submissions due by Jan 22, 2022.

Formed in the face of rising awareness in the performance industry, the Brave Space Project is creating interventions to prevent sexual assault and harassment in small theaters. This residency seeks a small, diverse group of artists to participate in a five day workshop on the Cucalorus Campus in Wilmington, NC. Apply now! 

The Bascom invites applications from photographers for their spring 2022 Photography in Residence program.

The Stochastic Labs offers fully-sponsored residencies to engineers, artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs from around the world. Residencies include a private apartment at the mansion, co-working and/or dedicated work space, shop access, a $1k monthly stipend and a budget for materials. Rolling deadline.

Vermont Studio Center’s Displaced Artists Fund exists to assist visual artists and writers displaced due to natural disasters, climate change, or political turmoil or threat by providing residencies in a safe and supportive community of creative peers. Rolling deadline.

Offering various residencies and internships in printmaking, book arts, ceramics, and photography.

UNC Asheville invites artists to submit entries to the 13th Annual Juried International Exhibition of contemporary drawing, open to any traditional or experimental drawing media, including 2 or 3-dimensional works, video and/or installation.

The A.D. Gallery at UNC Pembroke welcomes all interpretations of the theme, “Our Neighborhood”, in a variety of media, subjects, and approaches.  Artists are invited to submit two-dimensional or three-dimensional works, installations or digital media (including video-based media). 

Calling all artists (photographers, quilters, sculptors, new media and digital artists, etc.). Have your work exhibited at Durham County Library.

Are you interested in displaying your work at the GPAC? We are always interested in seeing new works and helping artist gain the exposure they deserve! Complete our free online application to get started. Rolling deadline.

Grey Cube Gallery proudly presents the first Painting & Photography online art contest for the month of December 2021. Artists from around the world are welcome to submit. This is the open subject theme. The Gallery will accept entries in 2 different categories (painting and photography). 

Passepartout Photo Prize is a young contest, which aims to support the development of talented photographers by offering biannual cash prizes, the possibility of publication in our annual catalogue, other collateral prizes offered by our sponsors and the opportunity to exhibit in a prestigious gallery in Rome.

Rock of Truth has been commissioned by University of Cincinnati’s Office of Planning, Design and Construction with the financial support of Sigma Sigma Honorary Fraternity. The artwork will be located in front of UC’s College of Law on Campus Green, the primary green space on UC’s West campus. Any and all media will be considered. It will be free standing and should be appropriate for viewing by all members of the general public and the campus community. 

Waterworks presents three rotating exhibitions in its galleries every year, and welcomes professional artists to submit their work for consideration. Submission deadlines are January 30 and September 30 of each year.