The Dean’s Arts Advisory Council in the College of Arts & Letters invites proposals for its CREATE! Micro-Grant Program where students receive funding to create artworks that respond critically and imaginatively to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Open to all Michigan State University undergraduate students who will remain enrolled at MSU during the Fall 2022 semester, the proposal submission deadline is June 6, 2022. The winning proposals will be announced on Friday, June 17, 2022, with each winning proposal receiving $500 to be used to create the proposed artworks.
Artwork proposals may use any of the following mediums: ceramics, design, film and video, musical composition, musical performance, new media forms, painting, performing arts, photography, playwriting, poetry, printmaking, prose, screenwriting, sculpture, sound art, textile arts, visual art, and other genres and mediums also accepted.
The artworks’ themes, topics, methods, and approaches may respond to any of the following aspects of the global pandemic, but are not limited to:
- Immigration and travel in the time of COVID-19
- Cultural and political histories of pandemics
- Personal and familial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Social policies and governance related to COVID-19 (as they intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and disability)
- Personal and community impacts of COVID-19 (as they intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and disability)
- Social traumas related to COVID-19 (including domestic violence, police and extrajudicial violence, discourse around gun rights, hate crimes and bias incidents)
- Impacts of the pandemic on arts practice and resources
- Impacts of the pandemic on education and learning
- Discoveries and new paradigms inspired by the pandemic
- Aspirations for new artistic, social, and personal formations post-pandemic
- Visions for hope and healing during and after the pandemic
The CREATE! Microgrants initiatives of 2020 and 2021 were successful opportunities for student-artists/writers to feel supported and productive during the ongoing pandemic. The completed artwork of the winning proposals were presented in a virtual exhibit. View the 2021 Exhibition and the 2020 exhibition.
In their reflections on the impact of the Micro-Grant on their practice, students stated that they used the micro-grant support to:
- expand the scale of their projects,
- take strategic risks,
- feel seen and heard as artists/writers,
- listen to the unarticulated histories of their work,
- understand their social roles as activists and advocates.
The CREATE! Micro-Grant program is made possible through the support of the Department of African American and African Studies, Department of English, MSU Center for Interdisciplinarity (C4I), MSU College of Arts & Letters, MSU College of Music, MSU Creative Writing Program, MSU Federal Credit Union, MSU Film Studies Program, MSU Associate Provost of Undergraduate Studies, and the MSU Residential College in the Arts & Humanities.
