The City of Davis Arts & Culture Grants for Individual Artists is a one-time grant program, funded by the City of Davis from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The goal of the grant is to stabilize the City’s nonprofit arts & culture sector, which saw a significant negative economic impact due to the pandemic. The grant will offer unrestricted support, with the intention of providing financial relief to eligible working artists and cultural practitioners whose work aligns with the goals of the city’s Arts & Cultural Affairs program, and to assist with the ongoing economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our arts sector to help them on the path back to financial sustainability.   

Individual Artists’ Impact on the Arts and Culture Sector: The City of Davis recognizes the role local artists and creative workers play in enhancing the quality of life in their communities, increasing public access to the arts, and contributing to local economic vitality. We also recognize the significant economic disruptions some artists have experienced as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency: loss of venue space, performance opportunities, exhibition space, in-person programming, etc.  

Individual working artists are essential to our greater arts and culture sector -- serving as studio practitioners, teaching artists, performers, community organizers, and more.  The ARPA grants are meant to help support and retain these workers within the Davis community so they may continue their meaningful work. 

Grants of $1,000 will be made to eligible individuals to support their professional and personal costs which were impacted by COVID-19. Unlike other City of Davis Arts & Cultural Affairs Grants that offer project-based support, these funds are intended to support day-to-day expenses (rent, art supplies, insurance, transportation, application fees, etc.) and not specific programs. This funding is not intended to support start-up costs for those wishing to begin arts and culture work, but rather to aid those who had a practice or career in the arts in Davis and then were negatively affected by the impact the pandemic had on the arts sector.  Cost share/matching funds are not required.   

For the purpose of this grant, arts and culture is defined as the creative expression of beliefs, customs, institutions, values, goals, and other products and manifestations of human work and thought, shared within and among communities, passed on from one generation to the next through experiences and learning.  May include visual art, dance, theatre, writing and other literary arts, performance, music, traditional arts and crafts, oral traditions, and other forms of human expression. 

Application Requirements

Application Requirements:       

• Contact Information (Legal name, home address, phone, email, proof of residency)
• Brief narrative about your role in the local arts sector
• Online link to work examples or uploaded example
• Income history (check boxes)
• Narrative describing your artistic and cultural work in Davis
• Narrative describing financial reason for applying
• Demographics (check boxes)

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility:

Artists who are currently, or were formerly, on staff with a single organization as full-time employees are not eligible for this funding. 

1. You must be an individual working artist or cultural practitioner having demonstrated dedication in the recent past in Davis as a:  

• practitioner of dance or theatre (including choreography, writing, directing, design, theatre arts, etc.)
• performer of cultural tradition or cultural bearer or practitioner
• visual artist
• literary artist
• musician
• teaching artist
• arts organizer
• specialized artist worker (e.g., lighting or sound designers, fabricators, etc.)
• other type of artist

2. You must have a physical address in Davis, CA (in some cases, a track record of having significant involvement in the arts programming in Davis, CA without having a Davis address will be considered.)  

3. You must have been financially impacted during COVID due to loss of ability to perform, loss of revenue, event closures and cancellations, inability to work due to loss of space, or family circumstances, or other reasons that impaired your ability to work or earn a living. 

PRIORITY WILL GO TO artists who:

• Have a proven track record of working in a professional capacity in the local arts sector
• Have NOT been on a salary of .50 FTE or more for part or all the period since March 2020
• Have work that directly supports the Civic Arts Commission’s current funding priorities:
  • Efforts to elevate the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), Black Lives Matter (BLM), and other initiatives that promote cultural and social equity
  • Community health and wellness related to COVID-19, public health, social/emotional well-being
  • Economic recovery of community, local businesses, and downtown vitality

Artists may receive partial funding, based on the strength of their application or on the impact of COVID-19 on their work. Depending upon the number of qualified artists who apply, the city may choose to distribute the funding in larger or smaller awards than the stated $1,000.