Before The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, or South Park, the crazy characters of Reno 911 headed to Burning Man in their first series (2003).
Monthly Archives: November 2014
A New Online Art Grant System Is Live
image: Jim Bauer/Flickr (Creative Commons)
A new online system for Art Grants has quietly gone live. It’s buried deep in the blackrockarts site. The deadline is December 1 and you have to pay a fee to submit your Letter of Intent. It’s a little confusing – although it is called “Burning Man Grants for Art”, it’s only for art projects that aren’t going to Burning Man.
For Playa art, they provide a link to Burning Man’s web site, which says the deadline is Feb 15. This information conflicts with the last JRS, which said:
Burning Man Arts — the new department combining the Black Rock City Art Department with the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) — will launch a new online system in mid-November designed to make it easier for artists to apply for honoraria grants for art destined for Black Rock City.
This year, applicants will be required to first submit a Letter of Intent (LOI), which will allow the Grant Committee to select which projects will be invited to participate in the full grant application process, saving everybody time and effort.
The system will go live in mid-November, and LOI submissions will be accepted for four weeks. The Grant Committee aims to inform artists if they are invited to participate in the full grant application process by the beginning of 2015.
All artists hoping to receive a Black Rock City honorarium will need to participate in this new LOI process.
More information will be made available via the Jackrabbit Speaks and on the Burning Man Arts web pages as the rollout approaches.
Reading between the lines, I figure that both the blackrockarts.org and burningman.com sites have incorrect information, and artists who want an Honorarium Art Grant for a project at Burning Man 2015 should treat the Jackrabbit’s information as the most current – and wait for an announcement of the new system.
The other new online system that Black Rock Arts announced in their October newsletter, is for non-Playa art:
Burning Man Grants for Art (formerly the BRAF Grants to Artists program) 2015 grant cycle is underway! The online form for submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI) is now live. Tell us about your fantastic idea for a community-driven, interactive art project!
We fund projects that incorporate community involvement and exist for public benefit. If you’re hatching an idea for a project that brings people together, prompts interaction, and reaches beyond traditional experiences of public art, we’d love to hear about it!
The deadline for “Burning Man Grants for Art” – which, to be clear, is actually for art that is NOT for Burning Man – is December 1 2014, so artists who want to be considered for that need to pay the fees and get their submissions in, in the next 11 days. They fund 10 to 15 projects a year, between $500 and $10,000, with grants typically being in the range of $2000 – $6000.
From blackrockarts.org:
We have begun accepting Letters of Inquiry (LOI’s) for our 2014-2015 grant cycle. Read on to find a link to the LOI submission form. The deadline to submit an LOI is December 1, 2014. Late LOI’s will not be accepted, with no exceptions.
Full proposals will be accepted by invitation only, with LOI applicants either invited to submit a proposal or rejected by early January 2015 (exact date TBD).
We prioritize funding highly interactive, community-driven, collaborative works of art that are accessible to the public and civic in scope.
What is ‘interactive’ art?
- Art that requires human interaction to complete the piece.
- Art that involves the community and the audience in its creation, presentation and display.
- Art that prompts the viewer to act.
- Art that can be experienced in more ways than visually. We are fans of art that is can be approached, touched, heard or experienced, as well as viewed.
- Art that prompts people to interact with one another.
- Art that responds to participants and to its environment.
- Art that causes people to reflect on the larger community.
- Art that challenges the viewers’ traditional perspective on art.
- Art that belongs to the public and exists for the benefit of all.
What kind of work does this program not fund?
Although we are open to all proposed forms of media, there are some common projects that typically fall outside the scope of our criteria. The exception to all of the examples listed below would be if the project had a highly interactive element that moves the project outside the definitions of its genre.
We typically do not fund:
- Static work, such as sculpture with no interactive component
- Gallery work, such as paintings in a gallery
- Publications – poetry books, photo books, fiction, etc
- Photography
- Screenplays or films
- Musical, theater or dance productions
- Social aid/relief efforts
- Entrepreneurial endeavors
- Art destined for the annual Burning Man event in Black Rock City. There is a separate grant process to fund playa-bound artwork. Please visit the Burning Man website to learn more about the BRC Honorarium application process. (This program does, however, sometimes fund works headed to regional Burning Man events)
Our grants range between $500 and $10,000, but we most commonly award between $2000 and $6000. We typically fund approximately from 10 to 15 projects a year and receive as many as 300 proposals.
Full proposals will be accepted by invitation only in early 2015. To be invited, you must submit a Letter of Inquiry by December 1st.
Timeline
- Our online LOI application for our 2015 grant cycle is live!
- LOI’s are due December 1, 2014, 5:00 pm, Pacific Standard Time.
- Selected applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal by early January, 2015 (exact date TBA).
- Proposals are accepted by invitation only, and will be due in February, 2015 (exact date TBA)
- Selected grantees are usually announced March 15 of the year of the award.
- Funds are usually released to new grantees April 1 of the year of the award.
Late Letters of Inquiry and proposals will not be accepted. No exceptions. Please read our application instructions below for more details on how to apply.
Letter of Inquiry Instructions
Our online Letter of Inquiry will give you the opportunity to provide us with the following:
- Name of contact person, contact person’s phone number, email address and mailing address
- Name of the lead artist or program manager if different from the contact person
- Name of project or program
- An invitation code, which is “GrantsForArt-LOI-2015“
- Brief description of the physical manifestation of project or program (1500 characters, about 250 words or 1 double-spaced page)
- Brief description of how the project or program fits the program’s grant criteria and definition of interactivity. (1500 characters, about 250 words or 1 double-spaced page)
- One to three images or other media files
There is a $5.00 fee to submit your LOI. The entirety of this fee is payment to Slideroom.com, the online application service we use. You will be asked to pay with a credit card upon completion of the LOI. You will need an invitation code to submit the online LOI, which is posted on this page, above. [Code is: “GrantsForArt-LOI-2015″]
Proposal Instructions
Invitations for proposals will be extended to selected projects in late December 2014 or early January 2015. If selected, you will be invited to fill out our full application online. Uninvited proposals will not be considered.
In our online application, you will have the opportunity to tell us about your project, its goals, audience and interactive potential.
A complete proposal includes:
- The completion of the online proposal. We do not accept printed and mailed proposals.
- A timeline. Our online application has a form where you may describe your timeline, or you may upload your own format. We prefer you use our online form.
- A budget. Our online application will have a link to a template you may use, or you may upload your own format. We prefer you use our template.
- Supplemental images and materials. You will have the opportunity to upload images or other media files. We highly recommend you submit visual representations of your proposed project.
There is a $5.00 fee to submit a full proposal. The entirety of this fee is payment to Slideroom.com, the online application service we use. You will be asked to pay with a credit card upon completion of the proposal.
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image: Carrie Cizauskas/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Once again, the burden is shifted to the artists, who have to pay to submit a Letter of Intent, and pay again to submit a full proposal. $1500 doesn’t seem like too much for BMOrg to spend on software licensing, to let the 300 artists submitting proposals send them in for free. It’s less than 3 Donation tickets. Sure, it’s only five bucks (twice, if the artist makes it through the first round) – but it’s only five bucks to the corporation raking in $30 million a year, too, and to the non-profit entity with more than $1 million of undistributed assets. It seems a little cheap, for a charity whose sole purpose is supporting the Arts.
We’re still waiting on the announcement of 2015’s theme, which would be helpful to know for artists submitting their ideas for grants.
The 2014 theme was announced on January 8, the 2013 theme was announced on November 30, 2012, and the 2012 theme was announced on this day, November 19, three years ago at the Artumnal Gathering fundraising gala. The 2014 Artumnal will be held this Saturday, perhaps the announcement will come then.
Protesting the Protestors [Update]
Over at burningman.com, Caveat Magister’s attempts to laugh off the Burner community’s Commodification Camp concerns – Why Am I Making Fun of Burners and 12 Shocking Revelations About Ultra-Rich Plug and Play Camps – went down like a lead balloon.
Commenter Metapony likened it to the 2007 DPW workers rights protest at BMHQ, during a Regionals Conference:
This burning blog posting mocking people and misrepresenting the issue reminds me of something…
Oh yes, I remember! This is like the time there was a small protest across the street from the Burning Man office (during the spring regionals summit in 2007) and the BM Org sent a bunch of people out to make fun of them…
So carry on that fine tradition of misrepresenting and mocking folks with real issues, CM. Good job.
This is an interesting chapter of Burning Man’s history that I had never heard of before. From Bright Path:
Today, Feb. 18, 2007, a few workers, some with their heads covered by paper bags, staged a small demonstration outside of Burning Man headquarters in San Francisco to protest what they say are reductions in pay, forced “death waivers” and lack of adequate health care for the workers who primarily clean the desert up after the Burning Man event.
Now that I’ve seen the video, it definitely has some resonance with the current situation.
The protest begins in a fairly low-key fashion, with 2 of the protestors afraid to show their faces for fear of losing their jobs or future art grants. Caleb, the unmasked protestor, is very well-spoken about the reasons for their protest. Then, Burning Man HQ’s doors open and some other protestors stream out to disrupt the protest with a protest of their own: mocking the seemingly valid concerns about pay cuts, medical treatment, and possible violations of labor regulations.
Caleb “Shooter” Schaber
Sadly, a couple of years after this video was made Caleb “Shooter” Schaber, the unmasked protestor, gonzo artist, and former combat photojournalist, committed suicide in Gerlach, NV .
At the time these events occurred, he spoke out on tribe.net about the sock puppets that were dispatched to attack him as revenge against his peaceful protest. People wondered on ePlaya if the counter-protestors were acting independently, or if they were sent out by BMOrg to misdirect the situation. Some of the protestors were identified as Regional representatives of the Org.
Here’s some further discussion of the situation at Indybay and Fark.
Does anyone know the real story behind this? Was it all just a Cacophony-style prank, another Big Farce – or were the protestors expressing legitimate concerns? Did BMOrg ever respond seriously, or was the pranking the extent of it?
If you feel like protesting today, sign the petition against Commodification Camps.
Caleb David Schaber – founder of the Chupacabra Policia, press correspondent in Afghanistan, writer for Hustler magazine. He earned his playa name of ‘Shooter’ with a .38 in a Seattle bar in 1996. On April 17, 2009 he took the Hunter S Thompson exit from life. Caption + Image: flickr/Danger Ranger (Creative Commons)
[Update 11/2014 9:32pm]
A Burner who was there that day at the Regional conference but wishes to remain anonymous contacted us and provided some further details. I asked:
Were the protestors concerns fake? Did BMOrg do anything about them? When the anti-protestors learned what the protest was about , what did you do then? Did you go back inside and report back to anyone, or did nobody care?
Anonymous Burner replied:
In regards to Caleb’s group’s protest: I believe their concerns were real. Personally, I agree with where they were coming from. In fact,I believe that these concerns are manifesting again today within DPW.
in regards to The “protest of the protest”: I can only speak to what went on that day. The BMOrg didn’t “do anything” in regards to the protesters that I was aware of. The regionals did not go back to “report” to anybody. The regional’s network was not a hierarchical structure at the time (nor is it today to my knowledge). Did people care? Sure. There was definitely independent discussion after the fact, but not within the frame of the conference. The issue had absolutely nothing to do with what the conference was being held for, which was open discussion about building and strengthening “Burner” communities within our regions.