Arts Build Community: Incubation Grants

The Arts Build Community: Incubation Grants by Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation aim to foster community engagement through innovative arts projects. Targeted towards nonprofit arts organizations in Berkshire County, the grants provide up to $7,500 to initiatives that address barriers to participation, such as cost and accessibility. The program encourages collaboration and inclusivity, specifically focusing on communities of color, youth, and immigrants, ensuring a diverse and vibrant arts culture in the region.

The grantmaking component of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation’s Arts Build Community initiative supports the testing of new ideas to increase community engagement through the arts and creative process, especially among communities of color, youth, immigrants and residents who would like to participate in arts and culture programming but face challenges such as cost, transportation and disconnection from the arts in the Berkshires. BTCF seeks to aid innovation among Berkshire County nonprofit arts and cultural organizations and community organizations that present significant arts and cultural programming as they launch new projects, expand existing programs and collaborate with other organizations. In addition, BTCF supports projects aligned with The Pay Equity Initiative.
BTCF will allocate funding to projects sponsored by Berkshire County nonprofit organizations that test emerging ideas to more effectively engage residents in the arts and creative process. The foundation encourages engaging local residents that represent groups we want to reach in the research, design and implementation of the projects.
Proposed projects must be designed to reduce barriers identified by BTCF’s community-based participatory research, which include cost, transportation, time constraints and social discomfort (feeling unwelcome based on race and/or social class).
This may include, but is not limited to:

• Research to further inform your programmatic strategies in the arts and pilot a project informed by your research
• Expansion of or change in a current arts program or event with the goal of increasing access or addressing an identified barrier
• Targeted marketing strategies to reach new arts audiences
• A pilot project addressing any of the barriers noted above
• Funding

Grant awards will range up to $7,500 per project. The total amount available for all awards is $65,000.

Eligibility

Nonprofit arts and cultural organizations and organizations with arts and cultural programming in Berkshire County.Applicants must:Be incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization or operate under the fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3) organization.
Have operated with active arts and/or community engagement programming.
Be based in and serve residents of Berkshire County. Fiscal sponsors may be located outside of the county.
Neither include in its by-laws nor practice discrimination against a person or group on the basis of age, race, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliation or religious belief.
Have as its mission a focus on arts and creativity or is an organization for which an arts and creativity program can further its core mission.