Festival Grants

Festival Grants support organizations in their efforts to provide quality arts programming through festival activities and are awarded to assist with the costs of connecting artists (or their artistic work) with communities.

For the purposes of this grant program, a Festival is defined as an event that is a periodic—often annual—gathering or celebration that happens in a condensed period of time, featuring a varied and curated program of events, having an easily identifiable and unifying theme or specified focus.

Festival activities must last a minimum of one six-hour day and may only span the duration of two consecutive weekends. The majority of the event content and programming must be experienced live and in person and must be dynamic in nature. For the purposes of this grant program, festival activities can include juried processes, but scholarships, pageants or standalone award ceremonies are ineligible.

Festivals allow communities to share artistic and cultural traditions which can create vibrant opportunities and experiences for citizens and visitors. A festival is often a person’s first experience and point of entry with the arts and can serve as a bridge to new kinds of arts attendance. Festivals may be multidisciplinary in scope and often feature arts education opportunities. Festival activities can include various performing, visual and literary arts, food, and traditional demonstrations, but also may be specific to an artistic discipline.

An applicant must be incorporated as an Arizona nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status or be a unit of government. Eligible organizations include Arizona local arts agencies, tribal cultural organizations, government departments or agencies, university/college departments, and other nonprofit cultural and social service organizations. Unincorporated organizations may apply through a nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

Organizations applying for Community Investment Grants may not apply for Festival Grants within the same funding period.

DEADLINE: 11:59pm, Thursday, March 16, 2017, for the funding period of July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.

Submittable Is the New GO

The Arizona Commission on the Arts is now accepting grant applications through an online submission platform called Submittable instead of GrantsOnline (GO).

Note on Fiscal Year 2017 Final Reports

Due to the unforeseen changes to Grants Online (GO), we will not be accepting final reports for Fiscal Year 2017 grants in GO. Organizations that received grant funding for Fiscal Year 2017 will receive email instructions no later than February 1, 2017 regarding the completion of your final report.

Fiscal Year 2018 Online Information Session

Fiscal Year 2018 In-Person Information Session

In-person information sessions were held in Mesa, Surprise, Tucson, Phoenix, and Flagstaff in January 2017. In addition to the in-person information sessions, online information sessions were offered covering the same content.

Additional sessions may be added. Check here for dates and times.

Eligible applications are evaluated through a panel review process. These panels include community leaders, local business-people, artists, arts administrators and educators from diverse geographic, artistic and cultural/ethnic communities of Arizona. Arts Commission staff members do not participate as review panelists. Panelists evaluate applications based solely on the published criteria and provide recommendations for funding to the Arts Commission. Individual Governor-appointed Commissioners chair the panel meetings and as a body, carefully consider the recommendations of the panelists in order to authorize the final grant awards.

Panel meetings are open to the public and applicants are encouraged to attend. In addition, a live audio stream of each meeting will be available for remote listening online. Additional information, including which applicants will be reviewed on which days, can be found at http://azarts.gov/news/fy18-panel-review-dates-community-investment-grants/

Festival Level I: May 31, 2017

Festival Level II: June 1, 2017