There are about thirty artists in the classroom that is not designed for a lecture but is being used for one anyway. We are required to attend this information session in order to be eligible for our local arts funding. It is a two hour Power Point presentation about how to fill out the grant form. About an hour into it, the facilitator asked “Are we having fun?” and the silence was deafening. The facilitator is very personable and he’s working so hard to make this content less deadly than it is. But telling thirty artists how to fill in forms for grants, mostly between $1000 and $5000, is not scintillating presentation material.

I’ve been sitting in presentations like this for over twenty years now and every single one of them is like this. Or worse. They are a colossal waste of artists’ time, no matter which borough or organization is sponsoring them. Whether it’s the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council or the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, Queens Council on the Arts or the Brooklyn Arts Council, they all require that artists sit pliantly in uncomfortable chairs for two hours to hear how to fill out a form. Every time it makes me furious and is a major reason for my not applying for funding as often as I should. The grants themselves are onerous but the patronizing info sessions are somehow worse.

To keep reading Welcome to My Grant Info Session, visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.

This is Episode 382.

Song: Thin Line

Image by Mel Poole via Unsplash

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Emily Rainbow Davis