Culture Program: The Joyce Awards

Overview

_NOTE: The Joyce Awards will be paused for the 2025 cycle. We will be taking this time to reflect on lessons from the first two decades of the Joyce Awards and changes in the Great Lakes region and the arts before launching the 2026 cycle of the Awards. We look forward to sharing updates about the program in the coming year._

The Joyce Awards

The Joyce Awards, launched in 2004, was the only regional grants program that supported artists of color in major Great Lakes cities. It aimed to inspire creativity, artistic growth, and collaboration in Great Lakes communities.

In its first twenty years, the competition awarded more than $5 million to commission 87 new works created through sustained collaborations between artists of color and leading arts, cultural, and community-based organizations in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Each award has supported an artist or artists in the creation and production of a new work and has provided the commissioning organization with the resources needed to engage their surrounding communities.

Demonstrating the capacity of the arts to inspire and mobilize social change, the Joyce Awards have served as catalysts for artists’ creative practices and have helped foster culturally vibrant, equitable, and sustainable communities through the arts.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* Artists:

* Joyce Awards applications may be submitted by artists living and practicing anywhere in the world, provided that they are proposing a collaboration with an arts or community organization located in the metropolitan statistical areas of one of six Great Lakes cities: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, or Minneapolis-St. Paul.
* There is no restriction in regard to art discipline or medium. 
* Artists must be commissioned by an unrelated entity – no self-commissions or commissions by an arts organization or company founded or run by the artist.
* Commissioned artists may be related to the commissioning organization, currently or in the past, in a time-limited capacity, such as a residency, teaching artist, or board member.
* As Joyce Awards support the commission of new works, an artist’s proposed project should not have moved past the ideation stage.
* Although works need to be new, collaborations between artists and commissioning organizations need not be new.
* Joyce Foundation welcomes applications from artists and organizations who have worked together before. 
* Hallmarks of past Joyce Award recipients include artists whose work:
* Demonstrates artistic excellence as well as new thinking or approaches while being firmly grounded in the history and evolution of an art form and the discourse which surrounds it;
* Is as artistically and intellectually relevant to the current moment and historical legacies in the place of commission as it is rigorous;
* Engages with and is informed by the stories and concerns of diverse communities, including communities of color;
* Creates opportunities for community access and learning from the ideation stage through the culminating production; and
* Will have a culminating and tangible program, product or process.

* Arts Organizations:

* Arts or community-based organizations located in the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) of one of the six cities where Joyce Awards are made (i.e. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, or Minneapolis-St. Paul) may submit an application.
* The most compelling applications have come from organizations that: 
* Evidence the capacity to support an artist(s) through the commission and presentation of an original art work;
* Are most likely to use the proposed project and collaboration with the prospective artist to build upon and deepen connections with surrounding communities, existing and potential institutional partners and local civic leadership;
* Display the ability to harness additional funds as needed to ensure a project’s completion within a 12- to 18-month timeframe (with projects beginning no earlier than June 1, 2023); and
* Can design and execute a robust community learning, engagement plan, and audience development strategy that will ensure the community’s awareness of and access to the project from origination through completion.
* Demonstrate a commitment to advancing racial equity in its work.

* Though some Joyce Awards have purposefully sought to connect various geographies, a significant majority of Joyce Award activity as well as the culminating presentation or production must take place in one of the designated cities.
* Most organizational awardees are first-time winners, commissioning organizations can submit up to two proposals per cycle and can commission any artist that is not the previous recipient of a Joyce Award.

Ineligibility

* However, artists who have received a Joyce Award in the past are not eligible to apply again as a commissioned artist.
* In addition, organizations that have received a Joyce Award in the past may re-apply if proposing a commission with an artist who has never received a Joyce Award in the past.

The Foundation does not fund:

* Capital proposals

* Endowment campaigns
* Direct service programs
* Commercial ventures
* Religious activities
* Scholarships.