Strategic Innovation Fund: Seed Grants (Canada)

The Fund supports rebuilding and transformation projects and partnerships that contribute to a more resilient, sustainable, connected, accessible, and equitable arts sector.

The Fund includes three main components to help seed, cultivate and grow your idea:

• Seed provides seed funding to kickstart small-scale innovation activities that explore and develop capacity, partnerships, and promising innovation ideas
• Cultivate provides project grants to implement, pilot and protype innovation projects that address systemic issues and benefit the broader arts sector
• Grow provides multi-year support for a limited number of longer-term, collaborative initiatives that propose sustainable solutions to sectoral or cross-sectoral issues and demonstrate strong potential to be scaled up for regional, national or international impact

These components are designed to accompany Canadian individuals, groups, and organizations at different stages of innovation readiness, from capacity building to exploration to prototyping to full implementation. The Fund supports both small-scale activities with short timelines and longer-term complex initiatives.

Strategic Areas

• Projects must respond to one or more of the following key strategic areas:
  • Strengthening the resilience and sustainability of the arts sector, including new business and revenue models
  • Advancing social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts
  • Increasing the accessibility of arts and culture for people who are Deaf or have disabilities
  • Decolonizing the arts sector
  • Creating a greener arts sector
  • Stimulating the digital transformation of the arts sector
  • Improving the health, wellbeing, and financial security of artists and arts professionals
  • Building networks and partnerships to strengthen the arts ecosystem and the role of arts in society
  • Amplifying the benefit of the arts for thriving communities

Funding Information

• Grant amount – Up to $25 000

Outcomes

• A diversity of individuals, groups, and organizations have resources and opportunities to develop new skills, knowledge, and innovation capacity.
• A diversity of individuals, groups, and organizations adapt to new and innovative ways of working.
• A diversity of individuals, groups, and organizations leverage strategic thinking and technology to develop new and innovative ways of working.
• Building digital capacity of arts groups and organizations that serve Indigenous, Northern, official language minority, and historically underserved and marginalized communities is supported.

Eligible Activities

• Eligible activities include, but are not limited to:
  • Sector research and exploration activities. Example: an environmental scan of resources that nurture the health and well-being of Deaf and disability artists; a research study that brings Indigenous artists and scientists together to develop practices that are more connected, respectful, and sustainable with the land, water, plants, and animals.
  • Planning and project development activities. Example: development of project plan, partnerships and key performance indicators for a collaborative, large-scale transformation project designed to create an eco-friendly touring model.
  • Evaluation, gathering, and knowledge sharing activities. Example: development of an Indigenous-lead online platform to share knowledge, stay connected and provide accessibility and sustainability to tradition, culture, arts, and language.
  • Partnership and network building activities. Example: development of a network designed to foster collaboration between official language minority arts organizations and the health sector.
  • Organizational transformation activities that demonstrate the potential to significantly increase the resilience, responsiveness, inclusion, social relevance and sustainability of groups and organizations.  Example:  planning for a merger or amalgamation; implementation of sustainable practices to decrease your organization’s carbon footprint; development of a social enterprise model for your organization.

Eligibility Criteria

• Types of eligible applicants to this initiative include:
  • artists and arts professionals
  • cultural connectors
  • artistic groups and collectives
  • artistic organizations
  • First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists, arts/cultural professionals, cultural carriers, groups, collectives, and organizations
• Organizations presently receiving core grants are eligible to apply to this initiative.
• Your eligibility to apply is determined by the validated profile created in the Canada Council portal.
• Targeted funding will be in place to ensure equitable support for applicants who have self-identified using the checkboxes in the Council’s portal as belonging to one of the Council’s designated priority groups, which include applicants from culturally diverse, Deaf and disability, official language minority, and Indigenous communities.
• In addition to the Council’s designated priority groups, they also encourage applications from youth (18 to 35) and other historically underserved and marginalized communities, including 2SLGBTQ and gender-diverse communities, women, and artists at intersections of multiple identities.

For more information, visit Canada Council for the Arts.