The UW–Madison Division of the Arts’ Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Committee is pleased to announce the launch of a new funding opportunity called the Artivism Student Action Program (ASAP).
Available to UW–Madison students in any year or major of study, ASAP was developed in response to students’ desires to use politically engaged art to bring about a more equitable world. With funding from UW–Madison’s Anonymous Fund, ASAP provides immediate financial support for student-led, art-based interrogations of longstanding oppressions, biases, and inequities. Funding awards will range from $100 to $5,000 (individual students applying can receive up to a maximum of $1,500).
This target funding program available to UW–Madison students, student teams, and Registered Student Organizations seeks to: fund student-led endeavors emerging from the intersections of art and activism to address social issues, and facilitate dialogue and create spaces to design and imagine social transformation. Cross-campus and community partnerships are encouraged.
Funding examples include, but are not limited to, the following:
- catering, venue, and equipment rental to host guest artists or students (poets, musicians, scholars, filmmakers, actors, etc.) to present on systemic racism or implicit bias;
- purchasing materials for creating visual art with artists of various physical and intellectual abilities;
- production of a film, musical, or dance performance that reimagines the status quo;
- curation of a virtual or in-person arts installation investigating “phobias.”
While this is not exhaustive of what ASAP will fund, projects should feature, center, benefit, and/or be led by people marginalized due to their racial, sexual, religious, cultural, and gender identities; physical abilities; socioeconomic status; or any other form of identity-based oppression not listed here.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis throughout the 2021-2022 academic year and will be evaluated soon after they are received. Applicants will receive notification of funding within one week of receipt. The proposals will be evaluated based on five main areas: quality and creativity, urgency, public benefit and impact, feasibility, and demonstrated need. Applications scoring 10 or below are not disqualified, though will be given feedback on how best to improve their score.
The Division of the Arts believes in the capacity of students to change the world, and that the arts can catalyze this change. For more information about ASAP, please visit artsdivision.wisc.edu/asap-fund/ or send an email to asap@arts.wisc.edu.