Artist Development Microgrant

Taylor Poitras: Welcome to the information session for the 2026 Artist Development Microgrant.

This info session is intended to highlight some of the key features of this grant program, as well as some of the changes that have been made this year. However, please be aware that this info session will not be going through all the details about this program. Everything important that applicants need to know is fully outlined in the program guidelines on our website, as well as our Investment Program FAQs, or Frequently Asked Questions. Please read those documents in full before you consider applying.

If you require any kind of support to read or understand those documents, please reach out to us. CADA is happy to help with any costs related to translation or interpretation.

Staff are also here to answer questions and provide clarity, so when in doubt, please reach out.

The primary contacts for this program are Caitlin Russell and Jasmine Piper. Please reach out to them directly with any questions you may have about the Microgrant program. If you have questions specifically related to the online grant platform or any technical issues, please contact grants@calgaryartsdevelopment.com.

We understand that our programs and processes create barriers to access for many artists and organizations who want to apply. Help is available for applicants even if they choose not to apply for the program. If you experience accessibility, cultural or language barriers, our staff members can help you with checking if you’re eligible to apply, finding the right grant program for your project, or creating and submitting your grant application.

There are also supports available after a grant is awarded to help with completing final reports. For example, one of the options for application support is working one-on-one with a staff member to develop accommodations through conversation and check-ins. Our team can assist you over the phone, in person or online. This can include support with things like translation, transcription, language interpretation, submitting a video or audio application instead of a written application, or providing general grant feedback.

If you experience an accessibility-related barrier, you may also wish to seek out personal one to one assistance from someone outside of Calgary Arts Development to help you with the application process. If this is something you need, our staff may be able to directly pay that external support person for the hours they spend helping you with your application. In those cases, it’s up to the applicant to determine the amount of time, the kind of support, and hourly rate with whomever they choose to work with.

If you are new to grant writing, it might be helpful to seek support from someone who has applied for an art grant before or is familiar with writing grants.

To learn more about the kinds of services that you can request, please review our full Applicant Support and Accessibility Policy and reach out to program staff with any questions.

Before we share some of the key features to remember about this program, here are a few changes that we wanted to highlight this year.

The first is that the microgrant program will now be 100 per cent staff reviewed. In past years, a small committee of peer assessors would review applications first and then staff would make the final call on eligibility. This year, program staff will be responsible for reviewing and determining if applications to the program are eligible and complete. And as always, only eligible applications and expenses will be put through to the lottery.

We’ve also updated our definitions for professional individual artist, artist collective and cultural worker to try and provide more clarity and guidance around how CADA defines these and determines eligibility.

The biggest shift to eligibility within these definitions is that all applicants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of applying. CADA is no longer able to consider applications from minors moving forward.

Lastly, we have adjusted the names of the two program streams along with their definitions to try and add more clarity to applicants. However, the streams themselves have no major shifts.

The Artist Development Microgrant provides one-time funding to support artists with accessing activities and opportunities related to either artistic professional development or career development and promotion. These are the two program streams the applicants are asked to choose between.

The goal of this program is to contribute to the skills and knowledge required to advanced artists’ careers and further develop artistic practices in Calgary by investing in access to education, training and mentorship, marketing and promotion, building skills and networks, and developing entrepreneurship and business skills and strategies.

This program is open to professional Calgary-based individual artists, collectives and cultural workers working in any artistic discipline.

Please read the program guidelines to understand what we mean by Calgary-based, individual artist, artist collective or cultural worker to ensure that you are eligible to apply.

This program does not accept applications from arts administrators, agents or managers, production companies, registered for-profit corporations or businesses or registered not-for-profit organizations.

Eligible applicants may apply for up to $5,000 towards their activities and the total pool of funding available through the program this year is $700,000.

We are offering two separate intakes this year, with one deadline in the spring and the other in the fall. The overall pool of funding will be split in half between each of these two intakes with $350,000 in each.

This program piloted a lottery process in 2024 and 2025, and we’ll continue to use a lottery process again for 2026.

How does the lottery process work?

Applicants will submit their applications by the stated program deadline.

Program staff review applications over a five-to-six-week period based on the five program considerations outlined in detail in our guidelines. These five program considerations help staff evaluate if an applicant and their project are eligible and if the application includes all the required information to be considered complete and supported.

There are no competitive scores or rankings assigned to applications in this program.

All eligible applications are then entered into a lottery draw where they each have an equal chance of being randomly selected.

If your application includes both eligible and ineligible activities and expenses, program staff may not include, may only include, sorry, the eligible portion of the grant request in the lottery at their discretion.

Ineligible applications will not be included in the lottery.

There’s one lottery draw for each of the program streams. The available pool of funding is prorated between the two streams based on the number of artists that applied to that stream and the dollar amount requested within the stream.

The lottery process will be conducted by our research and policy manager using software to randomize the eligible list of applications. All identifying information connected to the application, such as the artist’s name, is removed from the list and only the unique application ID number will be visible when the list is randomized and the grants are awarded to ensure that there is no staff bias.

Once the list is randomized, we’ll work down the new list awarded, awarding the full amount of each request until all funding is allocated.

Just like our peer assessment processes, the lottery is not a public event. The process will be witnessed by the grant investment team, the director of community investment and impact, and one other member of the CADA leadership team to ensure the validity and integrity of the process.The lottery process is recorded and kept as part of our confidential records.

Applicants are then notified about the lottery results about six weeks after the deadline, and if anyone declines the grant after being awarded, the next person on the original randomized list is offered funding.

Applicants may reapply to the next intake if they are unsuccessful, so long as their activities are still eligible.

Applicants cannot receive an Artist Development Microgrant in back-to-back intakes, regardless of calendar year. This means that if an applicant is successfully awarded funding, they cannot apply and receive funding again in the next intake, they would need to sit out the next round.

Applicants must also keep in mind CADA’s Open Grant Policy, which states that applicants may not have more than two open grants with CADA at any one time. This does not include public art grants.

If folks are unsure about the number of open grants they hold, please contact our team.

So why a lottery?

We piloted a lottery process for this program in 2024 with one intake, and again in 2025 with two intakes. This change came after running the program in a competitively assessed way for two years prior and receiving valuable feedback from applicants, assessors and program staff.

To highlight some of the rationale for piloting and testing out a lottery process, we noticed that the number of applications we were receiving to the Microgrant program each intake were so high that the assessment process took months and the workload was quite high for committee members and staff, especially when the program ran multiple times per year on top of other granting programs. This was not sustainable.

We noticed that the assessment committees for the program had challenges deciding which applications merited funding in comparison to other applications. For example, for the many artists that asked for funds to build websites to promote their practices, assessors and the members of our team who reviewed those applications felt challenged to determine which applications made a better case or were more deserving of funds given the similar straightforward nature of the proposed activities and the comparable impacts on the artists applying. A majority of applications to the program were scoring highly and the difference between scores was very minimal and didn’t feel meaningful when funding top-down based on average total score.

As a team, we were also grappling with the amount of time and effort that artists put into their grant applications. The amount of time, effort, detail and case building that applicants were required to include in order to compete was not commensurate to the amount of funding being offered in the microgrant program. It felt like more than should be reasonable or necessary to include to meet the goals and purposes of this program.

We took these factors into account when designing a more simplified application and assessment process.

We wanted to acknowledge that regardless of artistic experience, artistic practice or previous experience receiving grants, all artists have equal opportunity to funding that would help them grow and develop in their practices.

We noted that other fields in health research and other arts and civic recreational programs have used lottery processes and received positive feedback from the communities they support.

After running the lottery for the program in 2024 and 2025 to much success, we decided to continue the pilot process for 2026 as well.

To highlight some of the successes:

• The application process has been more accessible to artists applying and has taken less time on average to complete.
• The assessment process has been faster so results can be shared much sooner, which also makes it possible to run multiple intakes each year instead of only one.
• We were able to fund 50 per cent of eligible applications received in 2024 and between 25 to 38 per cent of applications received in 2025 across both intakes. This included many first-time applicants and artists who experienced barriers to access.
• And when looking at the proportionality of who had been funded against who applied in terms of artistic discipline, years of practice, equity, priority groups, etc., the lottery had produced extremely proportional results.

Over the past three intakes of running the lottery, we’ve also discovered some learnings and areas for improvement. For one, getting much clearer in the guidelines about eligible activities and expenses, making guidelines as clear as possible helps decrease the number of ineligible applications and expenses being put through, as well as the need for applicant followups.

We also expanded and clarified the program considerations to make it more clear what staff are reviewing when it comes to completeness, and what applicants need to include and consider in their applications.

We also decided to limit back-to-back applications so that different artists in the community can be supported by the lottery each round. This, combined with the Open Grants Policy, should help ensure that volumes remain manageable, success rates remain higher, and many different artists have an opportunity to be supported by CADA’s programs.

The lottery process is still very much in a pilot phase for 2026, and staff will continue to gather feedback and data across a number of years to better evaluate if a lottery process continues to be the best choice for this program.

We welcome any feedback from artists applying in the community as well.

It’s also important to note that we are not considering a lottery process for larger grant programs like our project grants because we feel their peer assessment is important and valuable, especially when it comes to larger budget projects and projects that may involve collaborating with artists, engaging communities or participants, and creating, sharing and presenting work with an audience or public.

We will still use specific criteria to competitively assess those programs, with input from peer committees.

Here is the timeline for Intake 1 of this program.

I primarily wanted to highlight the last day that you can reach out to ask staff to look over your draft application before you submit, which is March 16, 2026.

The deadline to apply is March 25, 2026 at 4:30 pm MT.

We will not accept late applications, so please submit early.

If you need to request a deadline extension, please refer to our Deadline Extension Policy.

It’s also important to note that if you are applying to Intake 1, your activities must occur between January 1 to December 31, 2026.

We will not fund activities or expenses from 2025, and you must wrap up any activities before the end of this year.

Also, please keep in mind that grant results and funding will not occur until May to June of 2026, so applicants must keep this in mind when planning and determining what is feasible for them.

If your activity has already occurred or will be complete before the results and funding are released, please ensure that you’re able to cover all costs on your own and be aware of the possibility of not receiving the grant.

If you cannot undertake the activity or opportunity without first confirming and receiving funding, then please ensure your activities will take place after the funding is scheduled to be released, so in this case, after June 2026.

Here’s the timeline for Intake 2 of this program.

Again, the last day to request staff feedback on your draft application is September 14, 2026, and the deadline to apply to Intake 2 is September 23, 2026, 4:30 pm MT.

Activities funded through Intake 2 may only occur anytime between July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027. However, grant results and funding will not occur until November 2026 at the earliest. So again, please keep this timeline in mind when you’re planning your own timeline and activities.

Since the results from Intake 2 are being shared so late in the calendar year, we do offer our Installment Policy. This means that successful grantees in Intake 2 are given the option to receive their funding in November or December of 2026, or they can defer their payment to January of 2027.This option makes sense for folks who whose activities are primarily occurring in the 2027 calendar year. This would ensure their grant payment and expenses both occur in the 2027 tax year.

What can you apply for?

Applicants to this program can apply for multiple activities within one application, however, any activities included must fall within one of the two program streams, not both.

Applicants must pick one stream and apply to either the Artistic Professional Development stream or Career Development and Promotion stream.

To give an example, if I have selected the Artistic Professional Development stream, I could choose to include a four-month, one-on-one mentorship with someone and a few online courses to learn a new artistic skill, but I would not also be able to include website development or promotional activities since those are part of the Career Development and Promotion stream.

If I would rather receive support for hiring a web designer, creating and printing business cards, or hosting a book launch for my newly created graphic novel, then I would need to apply to the Career Development and Promotion stream.

Activities funded in this program may be retroactive, meaning that they have already happened, or they can still be yet to occur.

The date range for when activities must fall between varies by intake, so always make sure you check the eligible dates for each intake, which we just covered in the last two slides.

Your application must include specific details and dates for all planned or completed activities. So while your activities do not have to be fully confirmed at the time of applying, applicants must provide specific details about their proposed activities. For example, who they will engage as a mentor, which courses they’ll be taking, or which residency they are applying to.

Applications that are vague will not be put through to the lottery. For example, an applicant that wants to develop their animation skills stating that they’ll eventually find courses to take is not specific enough, or an applicant that is still brainstorming who they would like to engage as a mentor would not be eligible.

This program also is not intended to support general, ongoing administrative time or practice time that isn’t connected to a specific project or opportunity.

Stream One

This stream is for activities related to the professional development of your artistic practice, skills, knowledge and relationships through mentorship, continuing education, training, learning or development opportunities.

Activities may take place online or in person locally, nationally or internationally.

There’s a full list of eligible activities that fall within this stream, outlined in detail in the guidelines. However, in this info session, I’ll share some specific examples of activities that could be funded within this stream, some of which are based on real applications that were funded in past years.

So you might apply to this stream to:

• Participate in the Artist Entrepreneur West Mentorship program, or
• To undertake a technical weaving course and purchase needed equipment to successfully advance my skills as a weaver, or
• To attend a six-week puppet making residency in France this summer.
• Maybe acting lessons for all three members of our collective to enrich the musical writing process, or
• To study one-on-one with a revered guru based in India to elevate my vocal practice in Indian classical music, or
• To participate in a series of literary workshops hosted by a local organization in Calgary centred on editing and publishing.

Stream Two

This stream is for activities related to the strategic development and promotion of your artistic practice.

This could include activities or opportunities related to documenting, marketing, promoting or sharing your completed artistic work.

Activities could also involve learning specific administrative skills, or developing business models for your art practice, or developing artistic networks, markets or income streams.

Again, there’s a full list of activities that fall within this stream, outlined in detail in the guidelines, but again, I’ll share some specific examples, some of which have been funded in the past.

So in this stream:

• You might apply to hire a web designer to redesign my website and professionally promote my novels and literary career, or
• To attend an invited international exhibition to engage with peers, expand networks and develop professionally through cultural exchange and exposure.
• Support for weekly one-on-one mentorship sessions with an industry professional focused on marketing, branding, release strategy and career management skills.
• To undertake a digital marketing campaign including music video creation for the first single off of our band’s debut album.
• Professional photography fees for documenting artwork and presenting a cohesive visual identity for marketing and career advancement.
• To attend a theatre festival in the Netherlands with the purpose of attending workshops and networking.
• Or a professional mentorship to strengthen bookkeeping and production accounting skills.

Please note: this program is not intended to support activities primarily focused on the research, creation or production of artistic work, presentations, events, workshops, tours or exhibitions.

For example, as a musician, you cannot apply to record, mix or master your album or hire someone to complete album art. Those are part of the creation and production of a final piece of work.

This program also would not fund you to go on tour or put on a concert, but it does make some exception around marketing and promotional activities. For example, if you have a completed album, you could apply to this program to create a music video or host an album release event to help market and promote the album.

The same would go for literary arts, in that you could not apply to hire an editor to edit the final draft of your manuscript or an illustrator to do your book cover, but this program could help with the marketing and promotion of the book or a book launch, for example, or if you had a chance to promote the book at a conference or event.

As a filmmaker, you would not be able to apply for the research or production of a film, but this grant could help with submitting to film festivals, promoting the film or attending a festival that your film has been accepted to, for example.

As a visual artist, you may have been accepted to exhibit your work at a gallery overseas, and this grant could help cover travel costs to get you and your work there, but it would not be able to support costs or artist fees for creating or showing the work. It also could not support the production of your own exhibition.

As a dancer, this grant could help with attending and accessing a competitive residency program that you applied to, and while you may end up creating work during the residency, the primary focus of the residency would be on your professional development goals, learning new skills, networking and more.

As a digital artist, you could apply to attend a professional workshop that’s teaching the intricacies of a new tool or technique, but you would not be able to apply to this program to plan, host, or offer your own workshop to the community.

If you are seeking funding for activities that are primarily focused on research, creation, production or presentation of work, please refer to the 2026 Project Grant Program for Individuals and Collectives, which runs this spring.

In order for your application to be deemed eligible and complete, it must pass all five of the program considerations outlined in the guidelines.

Applications that meet these considerations will be put through to the lottery.

The first consideration being: does the applicant appear to be eligible? This means that staff will be reviewing your profile and application to ensure that you’re a Calgary-based artist and that you meet CADA’s definition for professional individual artist, artist collective or cultural worker. Again, these terms are defined in the Guidelines and FAQ.

We ask that you reach out to staff before applying if you’re unsure about your eligibility.

Your profile is where your Artistic Practice Statement and resume or CV live. Staff will be reviewing both of those alongside your application to determine your eligibility.

Your artist statement should be a concise and helpful overview that speaks about who you are as an artist, what you value, what kind of work you make, how you make it, such as processes or approaches, what is important to you, and why. This introduction provides helpful context for where you are in your career and how the activities proposed in your application connect to your overall artistic practice and goals.

Your resume or CV is a clear list of experiences relevant to your art practice and can include things like education, trainings, workshops, past work, media awards, grants received and more.

For the purposes of our programs, simplicity and readability are more important than fancy formatting. Be sure to include important information such as dates, locations, or a very brief description of each experience if needed.

Second, do the activities included in the application appear to be eligible?

Staff will be reviewing your application to ensure that any activities included fall into either the Artist Professional Development stream or the Career Development and Promotion stream, but not both.

Staff will also be reviewing to ensure that activities are not focused on the research, creation or production of artistic work, shows, events, workshops, tours or exhibitions.

Artistic creation or production may be a byproduct in some cases, but it should not be the primary focus.

Third, do all expenses in the budget appear to be eligible?

Please use the Notes section of your budget to clearly describe each expense item in detail and show calculations or breakdowns for each item.

Staff will be reviewing your application to ensure that any requested expenses fall within the list of eligible expenses outlined in the Program Stream section.

Any requests for equipment, materials, space rentals or subsistence will only be deemed eligible if they appear to be necessary to complete your activity.

These requests must be specific and clearly broken down in the Budget Notes and support materials.

Please do not include equipment requests that are primarily intended for the creation and production of work. Those are only eligible within the Project Grant program. Any equipment included must be specifically related to an eligible activity within this program.

Artist fees or other payments made to support artistic creation are also ineligible within this program. There may be some exceptions, for example, for launch events, releases, or the production of music videos, those may include artist fees.

If you intend to include compensation for artistic creation, we do recommend reaching out for staff approval before including it in your budget.

Fourth, does the application include the support material required to describe the proposed activities and expenses?

This consideration is very important. Staff will reference the Support Material table outlined in the Application Checklist in the guidelines to ensure that any required support material has been included.

The Support Material table was created this year to make it very obvious to applicants what they should be including based on the type of activity or expenses they’re requesting.

And lastly, number five, does there appear to be clear and supported relationships and compensation for others involved if relevant? For this last consideration, if an application involves accessing mentorship from a specific person, staff will be looking to see if the applicant has included confirmation from the mentor directly.

Your application, as well as any support material from the mentor, should clearly describe the benefit of the mentorship, the applicants learning goals, the mentor’s role, time commitment and compensation.

If your mentor cannot provide this in writing, please reach out to discuss alternative forms of confirmation or support that staff can consider instead.

If there are other people that are being hired or engaged in the application, such as a photographer, website designer, marketing company, legal expert or other service provider, staff will be looking for support material that outlines the services they are providing, the scope of the work, and they’re agreed upon payment from either a quote, a negotiated rate or a well-researched cost.

These program considerations are important for this program given that it’s run on a random lottery and not competitively peer assessed. Staff needed to ensure that a bare minimum of information and due diligence surrounding important things like fair and equitable compensations, clear agreements with other people involved or being impacted by your application, as well as ensuring that we are funding eligible artists with the kinds of costs and activities that this program was created to support.

We’ve done our best in trying to ensure that the guidelines and the application form itself help to spell out exactly what an applicant needs to consider and include in order to be put through to the lottery.

Where to apply?

We accept applications through an online grant platform which is called Smart Simple.

This can be accessed from the CADA website under login which is always in the upper right-hand corner, and it’s linked in multiple areas of the guidelines as well. You can also bookmark the portal login page for convenience when actively working on grant applications.

If you don’t already have an account with us, you will need to create an account and set up your user profile before you can apply.

As mentioned, if you’re applying as a collective rather than as an individual, you must have a separate collective account that you apply through.

If you have already applied to CADA before, you may log in as usual. If you can’t remember your password, click Forgot Password to reset it.

You can also reach out to Van to ask if you already have an account in our system and she can search the system, update any information and reset passwords as well.

Van can be reached by emailing grants@calgaryartsdevelopment.com.

When you log in, you will notice that there is a section called My Profile. Please ensure that your individual or your collective profile is fully complete and up to date.

The profile section includes information about you and your artistic practice, such as current contact info, years of practice, the disciplines you work in, your artistic resume or CV and your artistic practice statement.

Parts of your profile will be automatically transferred over to any grant application that you submit, so please ensure it’s accurate and up to date before submitting to any programs.

When you log in, you’ll also notice a section called Open Opportunities. This is where you’ll find any open grant applications currently available. There you should see the Artist Development Microgrant, click Apply and Begin Application to open a draft form.

If you already received a microgrant in the most recent intake of the Microgrant program, it will say that you are ineligible and prevent you from being able to apply as we don’t allow applicants to receive a microgrant in back-to-back intakes.

The application form will contain importance instructions throughout. Please take the time to read all instructions as they are very important and give guidance for what to include, how to make changes, and where to find more information as needed.

There will be multiple tabs that contain all the parts of the application form including written questions, a budget and support material.

Remember to save as you go. You can save and return to your draft application as much as you like.

After you’ve opened up a first draft, you no longer need to go to Open Opportunities, instead, you’ll see your draft application on the home page when you log in under the Drafts tab.

When you’ve completed your application, you can hit Save and Validate first and the platform will check over your application to make sure you aren’t missing any mandatory information or sections.

Once everything looks good to go, you can hit Submit before the stated program deadline and the system will still validate and check your application before it lets you submit.

You should then receive an e-mail notification informing you of your successful submission. If you don’t, please reach out to confirm.

Besides your profile information, here is a checklist of what you’ll be asked to provide directly in the application form.

• You’ll include a brief one sentence description of your proposed activity.
  • To attend a three-week residency in Banff this fall, or to hire a web developer to create a new artist website for documenting, marketing and selling my work, for example.
• You’ll indicate the amount you are requesting from this grant up to $5000 maximum for all applicants.
• You’ll indicate the start and end date of your proposed activities.
• You’ll select a primary artistic discipline that best describes the focus of your application as well as the specific program stream that you’re applying to.
• There are two short written questions in the application, each question is up to 300 words.
  • The first question asks you to describe what you want to do with this grant, including what will happen or has happened, when and where activities will take place, and who is involved.
  • Please be specific and straightforward. Staff need to have a clear idea of exactly what you’re proposing to determine if it’s eligible within the program. You’re welcome to speak a little about why and how you came to decide on The Who, what, when, and where of your project. For example:
    • Why have you chosen a particular mentor to work with?
    • What specifically did you look for when researching and selecting a web designer? Or
    • Why is it important for you to partake in this specific residency overseas?
  • The second question asks you to briefly describe your goals and why this activity or opportunity is important to you at this stage of your practice.
  • Depending on what you’re applying for, this section could include goals or outcomes related to your artistic practice, skill development, learning, training, marketing, financial skills or literacy, expanding on developing platforms, audiences or networks, relationship building, marketing growth, sustainability, and so much more.
• There will be a budget form within the application itself that you’ll fill out, including all relevant expenses and revenues, if any.
• And lastly, you’ll upload any relevant support material, which is mandatory, but what you include will depend on your activities and expenses.

Again, please refer to the table in the Support Material section to see exactly what staff will be looking for in terms of support.

We are hosting multiple virtual Open Office Spacesl online over Zoom [details here] for both intakes of the program. These sessions are open to any artist interested in applying to the program.

Artists are welcome to log in and join at any time during these Zoom sessions, to ask our program specialist questions about the microgrant and to listen to other artist questions. Folks can stay for as long or short as they like, there’s no formal presentation, just 60 minutes of artist Q&A.

The dates for these sessions are listed on this slide as well as in the program guidelines along with links to register.

You must register first to get the Zoom link sent to you. These sessions will not be recorded and ASL is not currently booked but can be requested with notice.

Thank you so much for your time, we hope this info session was helpful.

Here is the contact information for our program specialist again and we welcome any feedback or questions and look forward to connecting.

Caitlin Russell, caitlin.russell@calgaryartsdevelopment.com, 403.264.5330 ext.141

Jasmine Piper, jasmine.piper@calgaryartsdevelopment.com, 403-264-5330 ext.121