Creativity Grants

Over the years, the Firefly Arts Collective (FAC) has been proud to provide grant support to Firefly artists to enable them to express and fulfill their varied creative visions. These grants are intended to support and promote radically-expressive, community-based, interactive and/or collaborative projects that help define and shape the creative core of the event.

Review Process

For more information on how grants are awarded, see the Art Grants page.

Crafting Your Proposal

Please do not include any identifying information about the artist. Our committee process is screened so that all applicants are anonymized.

Art Grant proposals are PDF documents created by the artists that are uploaded to our custom grant review portal. There are no strict size or page requirements, but your proposal should address all of the items mentioned below. If you need help creating a PDF file, please contact grants@fireflyartscollective.org -- we do not want unfamiliarity with PDFs to stop your creativity!

When creating your document, be as visually descriptive as possible, through images as well as language. Sometimes it’s difficult to envision the awesome thing being described in the text. Pictures go a long way towards making your vision clear. Scanned pencil drawings, photographs, or CAD models are all helpful.

While beautiful document layout helps with readability, some of our best art installations had grant proposals which consisted of a few concise paragraphs of text and literal MSPaint doodles. The Review Committee understands that a great carpenter may be a horrible draftsperson.

• Short Art Description (under 150 words): Start with a short paragraph description of your project, similar to what you'd find on a small card next to a work in a museum. This will be included in a Firefly guide and made available to Firefly participants and Art Tour guides.
• Experience Design: Tell the Review Committee about your project. Please include the concept, the scale, how people will interact with it (is it visual? aural? tactile? experiential?), and anything else relevant to the experience. How is this new or different from previous projects? Please include any relevant drawings, sketches, images, or inspirations.
• Technical Design: How will you actually create this? What sort of materials, hardware, tools, personnel, etc. will you need? How will it be constructed? How much are you making yourself vs. buying pre-made from the internet? Please include relevant sketches and diagrams. The more detailed, the better. In the past, the art that is electrical, electronic, or mechanical has had high rate of failure. It helps to have made a prototype or proof-of-concept, but this is not strictly required.
• Installation Plan: How will you get your project to its site? How will you weatherproof it? How will you make sure you complete it before the installation deadline? If this is an experience, when and how often will it be scheduled? Convince us that you can make this project happen in the middle of the Vermont woods in July.
• Risk Analysis: Please perform a risk analysis. What might prevent the project from being completed? What safeguards do you have in place? How do you plan to protect the project and its participants from each other during the day and night? What are the potential health hazards or danger to the environment? How will you protect your art from wind and rain? Please include a detailed safety plan if the project requires structural, combustible, or other qualities of risk. Some large-scale art (or projects using fire, for example) may be subject to greater scrutiny/further questions from the Review Committee.
  • Fire Plan: If your project incorporates fire or uses lithium batteries, please describe what safety measures you are taking. You will also have to get approval from Fire Safety (FAST). In general, we do not allow artists to burn non-Temple projects as a way of dismantling their project. If you have any questions, please contact grants@fireflyartscollective.org.
• Project Timeline: Attach a timeline for your project. We want to know that you’ve thought through how long this will take to build. Include the required dates included in the Summary of Deadlines.
• Project Budget: Attach a separate table with an itemized budget that lists all of your expected expenses. Please also list a separate table showing how you plan to cover these costs — what portion of the expenses will be covered by the grant? How much from other funding sources (fundraising, personal funds, etc.)? You may provide several proposed funding models, one for each grant tier you apply for. Remember: you can apply for multiple funding tiers, but there is no partial funding. We do not generally buy expensive durable items for a one-time installation (laptops, Raspberry Pis, sound equipment, etc.).
  • Expected Expenses include:
    • Material costs
    • Equipment rentals (no transportation).
    • Consumables
    • Etc.
• Project Placement: Where would you like your project to be placed? Priority will be given to returning projects, though final placement will not determined until Placement Weekend in June. Note that the terrain at Firefly is uneven and often muddy. If you have never been to Firefly we can make suggestions.
• List of Future Appearances: Will your project live on after Firefly? Please list any and all other events where your project will be installed. The more money you are asking for, the more we will want a plan for a long life.
• Leave No Trace Plan: Please describe your LNT Plan.