‘THEY ARE ARTISTS, NOT GRANT WRITERS’

Kellen Boice: breaking the rules.

When the Sioux Falls Arts Council began to give mini-grants in January 2022, its members were excited to get money in the hands of artists. What happened was much bigger than that. “We thought we’d be buying artists paintbrushes,” says Kellen Boice, executive director. “But there are so many things I didn’t realize. I didn’t know it would be this emotional and we’d be so invested in all these stories.”

One artist asked for help to replace art supplies that were lost when his basement flooded. An elderly writer asked for help to buy new eyeglasses so she could continue her passion of writing. “It’s not ‘show me the quality of your work,’ or ‘show me the money,’ it’s more personal than that. It’s been completely eye opening and really resonates with the kind of work we need to be doing,” says Boice.

Such stories may not have been known to the arts council if the board hadn’t made the application process so easy and accessible to artists. The application has just four questions and Boice accepts them on paper and through email. Boice has also taken applications over the phone with artists answering the questions verbally, and she has received two video applications. In one instance, Boice traveled to an assisted living center to facilitate the application process. Applications have been translated into five languages and are available at the public libraries and other public spaces.

That accessibility has been the reason for a high volume of applications. In the first round, the council received 80 applications and funded nine. To date, it has received 231 applications and funded 45, with the remainder staying in the pool for the next round of funding, which runs quarterly.

“We want to encourage and educate artists on writing grants and to feel comfortable in the process. Writing grants is hard and I didn’t have experience myself when I started,” says Boice. “In talking with other artists who have applied for grants, they get anxiety and have a hard time talking about their work or having confidence. They are artists but they aren’t grant writers.”

Boice says it’s time for the process of applying for grants to be easier for the artists even if it’s harder on the administration. She cites the request in most grant applications for high resolution images as an example.

“Why do we need that upfront?” she asks. “Not all are going to be chosen. These processes are harder on administration but easier on everyone else.” And that’s the point. “We are forgetting everything we knew about art administration and saying it’s about the people. My job depends on artists in the community and I need to make things easier for them.”

The micro-grants are possible through funding from the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation and the South Dakota Arts Council with generous support from the South Dakota State Legislature. To apply or find more information, visit ArtsSiouxFalls.org/artist-micro-grants/