2024 City of Los Angeles (COLA) Independent Master Artist Projects (COLA-IMAP) Grant Program
The COLA-IMAP Grant Program allows accomplished artists to create a new “mid-career” solo work with the freedom to re-focus on themselves and their core impulses. The COLA-IMAP grant category honors a spectrum of the City’s avant-garde artists who:
- Are dedicated to an ongoing body of excellent work.
- Represent a relevant progression through their pieces or series over the past 15 years (or 8 years for a dancer/choreographer).
- Exemplify a generation of core ideas in their field.
- Are respected by their peers and are role models for other artists because of their distinguished record.
Approximately 6-12 COLA-IMAP grant-contracts will be offered for designers/visual artists (including architects, graphic designers, and product designers including fashion designers), literary artists (poets or fiction writers) and performing artists (including choreographers who wish to make and perform individual dance works, musicians who wish to compose and perform individual music works, and multi-disciplinary theater artists who wish to invent and perform solo works).
The Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) will organize an online and/or printed catalog to promote the entire set of COLA-IMAP grantees as “creative treasures” and document/market the group as one cross-section of the exciting Los Angeles art scene. DCA and community partners will also attempt to showcase a curated selection of each master-artist’s new work in either a gallery exhibition or performing arts showcase.
ELIGIBILITY
Competitive applicants are:
- Individual artists or independent duos, who are professional masters of self-evolved ideas (not curators, presenters, or interpreters of other artists’ works, and not artists who have primarily built their credentials within collaborative groups or within social practices) If the art practice involves groups, interactivity with a specific type of person, or is conceptualized to be sited in a self-selected place, then please apply to DCA’s NEAR grant (Neighborhood Engagement Artists Residency). Proposed projects are deemed INELIGIBLE if they: are collaboratively made, and interactive with the audiences or other artists (but not including technicians or fabricators).
- Current residents of Los Angeles County, who also demonstrate on their resumes that they either live in the City of Los Angeles or have a 3 or more-year history of presenting work in the City of Los Angeles.
- Professionals who illustrate on their resume at least 15 years (8 years for choreographer/dancers) of a progressive, ongoing exhibition, publication, or performance record. This may include post-secondary student presentations and does not need to be 15 (or 8) consecutive years.
COLA IMAP GRANT PROGRAM WORKSHOPS
An online webinar workshop and an in-person workshop will be available in October. Webinar and in-person workshop space is limited to 30 participants per webinar and workshop, and RSVPs are required at least two business days in advance.
Workshop/webinar link: https://dcaredesign.org/cola/workshop-schedule
2025-26 APPLICATION TIMELINE
- Opens September 2024
- Deadline to apply is Friday, October 25, 2024, 11:59 pm
- June/July 2025: Applicants will receive notification of results
- Grant activity/projects will take place between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026
APPLICATION LINK:
For full program information, please review the program guidelines available at: https://dcaredesign.org/
