Travel Grants to Professional Artists in Visual Arts including Artists in Photography, Fine Craft and Architecture, and Independent Critics and Curators
Deadlines
1 March, 1 June, 1 October, 1 January
Program Description
The Visual Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts provides a range of grants in recognition and support of the independent creative work of professional Canadian artists of all cultures. These grants are intended for artists working in the following art forms: visual arts including photography, fine craft and architecture, and independent criticism and curation.
Artists, critics, curators and programmers working in the fields of new media and audio, film and video should apply under the Travel Grants to Media Arts Professionals program.
Travel Grants to Professional Artists contribute towards expenses incurred to travel to an event important to the artist’s career.
Except for independent critics and curators, travel related to research, development or creation of a visual arts project is not eligible under this program (unless created in the context of a residency). Applicants may include these costs in an application under other Grants to Professional Artists programs offered by the Visual Arts Section.
Independent critics and curators may apply for a Travel Grant for specific research projects, including studio visits.
Two categories of support are provided under this program: Presentation Travel and Travel to Artists’ Residencies.
Support for Presentation Travel
This category supports travel undertaken in response to an invitation that is related to the public presentation of the applicant’s work or ideas in Canada or abroad.
Hosts must be professional visual arts organizations. To be considered professional, an organization must be a public art gallery, a museum or an artist-run centre that pays a professional fee to participating artists. In your Travel Grant application, you must include written confirmation of the Canadian host organization’s intention to pay such a fee for the presentation or the activity. This condition does not apply to commercial galleries and juried art fairs or professional venues outside of Canada.
Important: Travel for the purpose of attending an activity of an organization that already receives operating funding from the Canada Council for the Arts or from a department of the federal government (including Canadian embassies abroad) is not eligible for support under this program.
Support for Travel to Artists’ Residencies
Travel Grants also contribute toward an artist’s travel costs to participate in a residency in a national or international artistic community. Hosts must be professional organizations.
Artists are responsible for securing their own place of residence. The applicant must have been chosen through a selection process and have obtained financial support in the form of a confirmed grant, artist’s fee, or a contribution to per diem and accommodation costs.
The length of the residency must not exceed 12 weeks. Artists who wish to participate in a residency of longer than 12 weeks may apply to one of the following programs:
- Assistance to Visual Artists: Project Grants
- Grants to Professional Independent Critics and Curators
- Assistance to Contemporary Fine Craft Artists and Curators: Project Grants
- Assistance to Practitioners, Critics and Curators of Architecture
- Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts
- Assistance to Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts.
You may obtain information on these programs on the Council’s website or by contacting the Visual Arts Section.
Eligibility
Applicants must be Canadian citizens or have Permanent Resident Status, as defined by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Canadian citizens need not be living in Canada when they apply.
All applicants must meet the Canada Council for the Arts’ definition of a professional artist, defined as someone who has:
- completed his/her basic training (or the equivalent)
- produced an independent body of work
- received the recognition of his or her peers through public presentation of work in a professional context; and
- maintained an independent professional practice for at least three years.
You may apply to the Canada Council for only one Travel Grant as well as one Grant to Professional Artists program (or to one deadline of that program) per fiscal year (from 1 April to 31 March).
Full-time undergraduate students at a school, college or university are not eligible to apply. Graduate students are eligible only if they meet the Canada Council’s definition of a professional artist, and the project for which they are applying is not related to their program of study. (A letter from the applicant’s program director that verifies this information must be included with the application.)
All Canada Council for the Arts programs are accessible to Aboriginal artists and artists of diverse cultural and regional communities of Canada.
Note that meeting the eligibility criteria allows you to apply to the program. However, it does not guarantee that you will receive a grant.
In order to be eligible, your date of travel must occur after the deadline date. The Canada Council does not provide retroactive funding.
Projects and Applicants Not Eligible for the Program
This program does not provide assistance for commercial, educational or commissioned works; capital expenses or basic equipment purchases; or promotional expenses (such as invitations or advertising). Please note that professional artists who work in industrial or commercial design are not eligible.
The following types of projects are not eligible for support and do not count in determining an applicant’s eligibility:
For All Art Forms:
- commercial projects
- industrial projects
- student projects
- educational projects, and
- design or development of computer programs.
For Fine Craft Professionals:
- manufacturing a line of production items.
For Practitioners, Critics and Curators of Architecture:
- projects on the history of architecture or art before 1945.
For Independent Art Critics and Curators:
Grant Amount
Travel Grants are available in fixed amounts ($500, $750, $1,000, $1,500, $2,000 or $2,500), depending on the extent of travel. Note that the amounts of $2,000 and $2,500 are available only to applicants who are travelling to or from northern Canada or to international destinations other than the United States and Europe.
Travel must be to a destination more than 500 kilometres outside the artist’s home region.
The grants contribute only toward the personal costs of travel and accommodation incurred by the artist, not to the transportation costs for artworks. Grants cover the costs of plane, train or bus fare and accommodation.
In the case of artists’ residencies, Travel Grants may be used only to cover the travel and accommodation between the applicant’s home and the location of the residency, and are not intended to cover the per diem, accommodation and registration costs of the residency itself.
The value of the grant is based on the most economical means of travel between the applicant’s home and the venue of the proposed activity. More than one destination may be included in the same round trip (for example, from Vancouver to Montreal for one activity, and then to Toronto for another, and return). Applicants must justify the amount requested.
The Canada Council for the Arts will fund projects that are also funded by other public or private organizations, but not for the same expenses.
Application Form
Or
Further Information
Shayla Morreau
Visual Arts Section
Canada Council for the Arts
350 Albert Street, P.O. Box 1047
Ottawa ON K1P 5V8
Telephone: 1-800-263-5588 (toll-free) or (613) 566-4414, ext. 5913
TTY (TDD) machine, for hearing-impaired callers: (613) 565-5194
Fax: (613) 566-4332
August 2006