Berkeley Artists, Festivals Eligible For Thousands In Grants

BERKELEY, CA — Berkeley artists and festival organizers are eligible for thousands of dollars in local grants, the City of Berkeley announced. Applications for artist and festival grants are due by 11:59 p.m. on March 31.

Thanks to grants from the city’s Civic Arts Program, artists who reside in Berkeley are eligible for one-time grants of $4,000 to produce new work in a variety of mediums, including visual arts, film, dance, music, theater, and literary arts. Artists who receive the grants are required to produce a local public presentation of their work for the benefit of the community by June 30, 2023.

Artists are required to have resided in the City of Berkeley since Jan. 1, 2020. Artists may not work for the City of Berkeley, and cannot be enrolled as a full-time student. Individual artists are also ineligible to receive funding more than once in a three-year period.

To apply and learn more about the requirements for individual artists, see here.

Organizers of arts festivals and “celebrations of cultural heritage relevant to Berkeley residents as a whole or those that recognize a specific community, neighborhood or shared cultural interest” are also eligible for grants of up to $15,000.

Events with a proposed budget of up to $5000 are eligible for awards of up to $5000. Events with budgets of between $5001 and $50,000 are eligible for up to $12,000, and events with budgets exceeding $50,000 are eligible for up to $15,000.

Festival applicants must be a nonprofit based in Berkeley, have at least one team member with experience producing at least two events of compatible scale to the proposed event, and hold an event in Berkeley from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.

More information about festivals can be found here.