The CREATE! Micro-Grant Program will once again award $6,000 in funding to 12 different student artwork proposals that offer critical and imaginative responses to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The winning proposals each will receive $500 to be used to create the proposed artworks.
The proposal submission deadline is Tuesday, June 1, and is open to all Michigan State University undergraduate students who will remain enrolled during the Fall 2021 semester.
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, and visual art. Other genres and mediums also accepted.
The artwork 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 pandemics 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 completed artwork from each of the winning proposals will be presented in a virtual exhibit supported by the College of Arts & Letters. Check out the virtual exhibit of the 2020 micro-grant funded proposals.
The CREATE! Micro-Grant program is made possible through the support of the Dean’s Arts Advisory Council; College of Arts & Letters; Center for Interdisciplinarity; College of Music; Department of Art, Art History, and Design; Department of English; Department of Theatre; Film Studies Program; Creative Writing Program; Honors College; and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.
For more information or to apply, go to http://tiny.cc/createmsu. Questions can be directed to Divya Victor, Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Creative Writing Program, at victordi@msu.edu.
