Deadline: 1 December 2024
The South Arts is pleased to announce its Jazz Road Tours Grant Program to support three to six site tours at an array of venue types, often in rural communities and other areas traditionally underserved by the genre.
Priorities
- Providing jazz artists financial assistance for performances/tours that increases their ability to earn income by connecting with a diversity of communities in traditional and non-traditional venues
- Giving artists business development tools to advance their careers beyond subsidies and grants. The goals are rooted in equitable pay and artist-centric programming as core values. South Arts believes that artists should receive fair pay for their time, work, and expertise, and that allowing artists (as opposed to venues/agents) to control engagements offers a unique level of creative autonomy and ownership.
Key Components
- An artist may apply for a three-to-six site tour comprised of connected (contiguous) dates at an array of venue types anywhere in the U.S and its territories.
- Jazz Road believes that through a logical route of tour dates, the artists will experience the continuity and momentum of repeat engagements, solidify developing music, and establish band identity/sound through working with the same personnel over the course of the tour.
- Jazz Road also will prioritize applications that include engagements in rural areas or that reach typically underserved communities, especially those that lack opportunities to present live jazz.
- Applicants that make a compelling case for how the tour will impact their careers in new ways are more competitive.
Funding Information
- Artists may apply for grants ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 to cover eligible expenses. This may include $2,500 for various non-musician personnel.
Eligible Expenses
- Performance fees: the equitable amount the artist/ensemble will normally charge for a touring engagement fee such as the one planned. Fees for a road/sound/tour manager can be included.
- Travel (ground and air)
- Hotel/Lodging
- Meals
- Backline equipment for artists which the presenter is not providing.
- In addition, up to $2,500 may be used for non-musician personnel to support artists on tour:
- This may include but are not limited to:
- Childcare
- Audio and/or video personnel
- Social media managers
- Tour managers
- This may include but are not limited to:
Eligible Tours
- Eligible tour routing will span three to six sites on contiguous dates.
- Funds are for artists to stay on the road and not return home. Funds are not for one-offs. Flexibility is possible around three-day spreads in between dates, or to avoid shows on Monday/Tuesday (slow evenings), if the band remains on the road.
- The tour must reach three to six sites, and either cover a total distance of at least 250 miles or more or reach at least one site which is 250 miles from the applicant’s home base.
- Tours must occur within the designated dates for each grant cycle.
- Eligible tour dates must take place in the U.S. or its territories.
- Tours can be within one state, cross state-lines, and/or travel to multiple regions.
- The tour request can be for a portion of a larger tour, so long as all dates are in the U.S. or its territories.
- Engagements must be for public performances.
- Shows can require admissions, suggested door amounts, or be free.
- Engagements can be for multiple nights so long as at least three separate venues are included in the application.
- All presenters regardless of size or financial contribution to the tour are expected to make significant efforts in promotion and/or create other opportunities to attract new audiences and fill rooms.
Eligible Venues
- Eligible venues include but are not limited to:
- Nonprofit and commercial established jazz presenters and clubs
- Performing arts centers, theaters, and concert halls
- Universities, colleges, and institutions of higher education
- Jazz festivals
- Local arts agencies/councils
- Radio station live segments
- Artist spaces
- Community centers
- Churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship
- Embassies
- Galleries
- Museums
- Listening rooms and libraries
- House concerts
- Open-air markets
- Retail and civic/municipal events
- Social scene hotspots
Eligibility Criteria
- Only individual artists (as an individual, an artist-led nonprofit organization, or an artist-led corporation) may apply to this program. An eligible artist is:
- A professional jazz artist, working solo or working with a composer-led or collective jazz ensemble which consists of 2-10 musicians;
- Age 18 or over and not currently a full-time student;
- Based in the U.S. or its territories, and is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident (non-residents may participate in a tour, but not be paid with Jazz Road Tours funds).
For more information, visit South Arts.