October 31 Arts Project Grants

School Arts Equipment and Artist Residency Grants Open

Free Grant Writing Session will be held

October 15 at 10 AM -- Mainly for Organizations 

Applications are open for grants from the NWMAC. It’s time to start writing your arts grant application!

Arts Grants for non-profit and governmental organizations. Non-profits and cities or counties can apply for one arts project at a time. Grants deadlines for these are July 31, October 31, February 28, and April 30. Grants are between $500 and $10,000. Funding sources for these grants are Clean Water, Land and Legacy funds and general allocation funds from the State of Minnesota. 

Organizational arts activities funded through this very important grant opportunity include festivals, community theatre projects, folk music entertainment, sponsorship of visual demonstrations, creative writing workshops and many other activities that improve the quality of life of people in our communities. Public art like murals or sculptures also fall into this category.

Arts Grants for Schools. NW Minnesota area schools can apply for up to $12,000 of grant funding from the Northwest Minnesota Arts Council for this school year into next summer. Funding can be used to bring in professional artists to work with students and/or to purchase arts equipment that is used by your community and your school; and stored/used primarily in the school building. To apply, schools fill out an application showing interest in funding, then requests are made with add-on forms within our online grant software for specific project funding requests. The program accepts funding requests from July 1 until April 30 each year, but remember that it is first come, first served so applying early is best. Each add-on funding request can be for up to $3,000 in grant funds.  

Artist Residency Grants. Schools can apply for an Artist Residency grant of $3,000. Schools can initially apply for 2 residencies. Then, based on remaining funding, can request up to 4 residencies total. Each residency requires a 10% cash match. Our teaching artist roster is a great resource to view artists available to teach in our area and is available on our website at under the artists tab. We have many new artists on our list. Another resource to find teaching artists is COMPAS. Ideas also include children's theater camp and/or arts camp during the summer at your school, and community education workshop series for adults on artistic techniques.

As with all of our grants, applications are only being accepted from our 7 county Minnesota service area including Kittson, Marshall, Norman, Pennington, Polk, Red Lake, and Roseau counties. 

We offer free grant writing sessions to help you write your grant application or to answer any questions. The upcoming session will be:

Thursday, October 15 at 10 AM mainly for Organization Applicants 

This Free Grant Writing Workshop is offered on Zoom -- contact our office for a link. You can also come to our office in Warren and attend from our grant writing station. You must RSVP to attend! Email NWArtsCouncil@gmail.com to RSVP or with questions. Don’t let your questions about the grant process keep you from applying! We are here to help. This is a great opportunity to come to our office and work on your grant in our grant writing space. If you can’t attend this training but would like assistance, please contact our office.

The grant application process is completely online and NWMAC's Director Mara Hanel can help walk you through the process of using the grants portal to get accustomed to it. Please contact her at NWArtsCouncil@gmail.com or call 218-745-8886, ext 1.