Message from Joe Smoke, Grants Director

The Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) is pleased to announce the next cycle of its prestigious City of LA Independent Master Artist Projects (COLA-IMAP) and Cultural Trailblazers programs. These linked programs honor artists who have a distinguished record of independently producing and presenting avant-garde works and support each applicant’s ability to forecast their next solo project for a panel of knowledgeable experts to assess and compare to proposals by other applicants.

This COLA-IMAP and Cultural Trailblazers RFP seeks to qualify a spectrum of mid-career literary, performing, and visual/design artists who will create new solo works between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026; which the City will then premiere in an online or gallery exhibition, performance and spoken word showcase, and/or a printed catalog. The COLA and Cultural Trailblazers categories are juried by new panelists each year.

Please note COLA-IMAP Grants cannot support proposed projects that are interactive, collaborative, or sited in places selected by the applicant-artist. If your project involves groups, interactivity with specific types of persons, or sited in a self-selected place, then you should be crafting your proposal in the DCA’s NEAR (Neighborhood Engagement Artist Residency) category where you can receive $12,000 for 11 workshops and a culminating event at the non-traditional venue of your choice.

DCA has a limited budget to present proposed artworks, therefore priority will be given to proposed projects which are easily pre-arranged (projects such as unrestrained installations and complicated performances are not a priority in the COLA programs since they require the applicant-artist to pay for rehearsal or installation, rather than paying themselves for less complicated presentations)., Furthermore, DCA has a limited budget to present proposed artworks, Therefore, priority within COLA-IMAP will be given to proposed projects which can be previewed in the applicant-artist’s personal studio or rehearsal space, and which are 12 feet or smaller, or 30 minutes or shorter in duration. This recommendation is not made to limit creativity but to balance it against feasibility. A proper mix of innovation and risk is welcome, so you can pay the best percentage of the grant-honorarium for a project that is both accountable and wonderful.

We encourage you to enroll in an informational webinar (see Training tab) in order to best understand how to upgrade your COLA-IMAP proposals each year. Proposals should include images/videos of recent works from the past 3 years (and shorter selections of older relevant-work when applicable). Please do submit one or more letters of recommendation from academics, curators, or colleagues who have very insightful things to say about the significance of your work. Please do not submit collaborative artworks unless you are a duo.

Our staff is available to assist you with questions via email at dca.grants@lacity.org, but the most effective way to improve the competitive nature of your proposal is to enroll in one of our interactive webinars or listen to a prior-recorded web tutorial.

Contemporary projects by local artists make Los Angeles a dynamic and vibrant place to live, work, and visit. For more than 30 years DCA has successfully employed monies from the Tourist Occupancy Tax (hotel bed tax) to support diverse arrays of creative projects by independent artists. I encourage you to share this opportunity with other qualified artists; because the more demand the arts community can show for program growth, the better chances that DCA can increase the size and number of its grants in immediate or following years. Perhaps you want to call two friends and apply in unison? The COLA-IMAP program has no limits on styles or genres within each discipline, so when peer panelists see groups of like-minded applicants they are more likely to choose representatives from within that type of practice.

Thank you for being a part of the extraordinary LA arts community and for showing DCA your latest ideas and forecasts within highly competitive proposals. Applications are due online by Friday, October 25, 2024.