The purpose of the Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grant is to honor traditional artists and encourage the continuation of Kentucky’s living traditional arts by funding mentor artists to teach skills and practices vital to their cultural heritage to less experienced artists within their communities.
The Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship grant provides up to $4,000 to a Kentucky master traditional artist to teach skills, practices and culture to a less experienced artist from the same community during the course of a year.
Organization: Kentucky Arts Council
Location: Kentucky
Contact: Mark Brown | (502) 892-3115 | [email protected]
Application Deadline: March 28, 2025 at 11:59PM (EST)
The application can take several minutes to upload. As a result, the arts council strongly advises that applicants do not wait until 11:59 p.m. to submit.
Grant Amount: $4,000
Dates: All activities and expenses must occur between July 15, 2025, and June 30, 2026
Eligibility: A mentor artist 21 or older, and an apprentice 16 or older, apply together. Applicant artists must be full-time residents of Kentucky for a period of one year immediately prior to the application deadline, and remain a resident of Kentucky for one year following award notification. Applicants must be United States citizens, lawfully admitted to the U.S. for permanent residence or have permission from the Department of Homeland Security to work permanently in the U.S.
Submission Guidelines:
- Carefully review the grant guidelines.
- Go to https://kyarts.gosmart.org/ and log in or create an individual profile.
- Click Current Programs & Applications. Find Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grant and click START.
- Complete each section, including artist information, budget, narrative, work plan, support letter, work samples and proofs of residency. Click “Save Work” at the bottom as you complete each section.
- When everything is complete, click the Final Submission checkbox and the Submit button.
Application Requirements:
- Artist Information
- Budget
- Narrative
- Work Plan
- Letter of Support – Include at least one letter of support for the proposed apprenticeship. The letter should be written by a member of the folk group or community, and it should explain why the mentor artist and apprentice represent artistic excellence based on the community’s aesthetics.
- Work Samples – The mentor artist and apprentice must submit one to three work samples each with their application, for a total of two to six work samples. The panel will rely primarily on the work samples to judge the quality of the applicants’ work, so it is important to make careful choices on what to submit. Work samples can be images, audio, video or documents.
- Include the following information about each sample: Title, mentor’s or apprentice’s role in the creation of the work, date or dates created, and suggested start/end times for video and audio if necessary.
Learn more and apply: Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grant