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What's the difference between the existing Arts program strategy and the new strategy?
The new strategy is an evolution of our existing Arts program strategy and focuses more directly on promoting engagement in the arts for all Californians. We believe this shift better aligns our Arts program with the Irvine Foundation's overall mission to expand opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful and inclusive society.
The new strategy is a reflection of the demographic changes and technological advances that have changed the way many Californians engage with the arts. Our new strategy will support organizations as they adapt to the changing arts landscape and will reflect what we are all learning from those organizations that have found new ways to reach existing and new participants and donors.
With this new strategy, we are also bringing more rigor and clarity to our funding criteria and we seek to create more alignment among our grantees. This will allow us to measure the outcomes of our grantmaking in a more strategic manner and provide a greater opportunity to share field-wide lessons and best practices that can benefit the arts community.
What are your new priorities for your Arts program?
The goal of our Arts program is to promote engagement in the arts for all Californians: Engagement that embraces and advances the diverse ways that we experience the arts and that strengthens our ability to thrive together in a dynamic and complex social environment.
We seek to expand engagement along three dimensions—who engages, how they are engaging and where that engagement takes place. Through these priorities we hope to engage more Californians in the arts:
- Who engages: We aim to increase engagement by low-income and/or ethnically diverse populations that have been traditionally underserved by arts nonprofits.
- How they engage: We aim to expand the ways Californians engage in the arts as active participants—by making or practicing art. This could include the use of digital technology to produce or curate art.
- Where engagement takes place: We aim to advance the use of diverse, non-traditional spaces for arts engagement, especially in regions with few arts-specific venues.
How will you make grants under your new strategy?
We anticipate that we will provide resources through our grantmaking to support a wide array of organizations, each at their individual stage of readiness.
We'll support organizations to adapt by piloting, strengthening and also sustaining change in the arts field—all of these approaches calibrated towards our goal of promoting engagement in the arts:
- Piloting change by promoting exploration and risk-taking towards expanding who engages in the arts, how they engage, and/or where they engage.
- Strengthening change by reinforcing change that is already underway.
- Sustaining change by helping to embed and integrate successful change-practices in the arts field.
Our first grantmaking fund under the new strategy, the Exploring Engagement Fund, is designed to help nonprofit arts organizations try new ways of engaging audiences and participants. Grant awards are intended as risk capital for nonprofit arts organizations to encourage experimentation with new programming utilizing the “Who, How, Where” pathways described above.
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What kind of art will you be funding?
We will fund arts nonprofits across all disciplines and in a range of sizes from small to large that expand opportunities for Californians to engage in the arts—by focusing on those who've typically been underserved, by exploring participatory arts engagement and, where appropriate, by utilizing different kinds of places to host arts activity.
How will individual artists and the creation of new work be supported under the new Arts program strategy?
In the past, the Foundation has supported individual professional artists through our grantmaking to nonprofit organizations, and we will continue to do so in this manner. Our new arts strategy will allow for more creation of work by professional artists if an organization’s proposal expands arts opportunities for Californians in the ways our strategy outlines.
Will you support arts education and after-school programs?
As a foundation, we are heavily committed to youth and education. Through our Youth Program, we are dedicated to expanding opportunities for young people in our state.
As has been Irvine's practice under the current strategy, the Arts Program will not support in-school, after-school, or out of school K-12 arts education programs for children and youth. Projects that target families (i.e., not primarily for children, designed for intergenerational arts engagement) may be appropriate for support.
How do the Irvine Foundation's geographic priorities apply within the new Arts program strategy?
Our Arts grantmaking will reflect Irvine's continued focus on the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire as priority regions over other areas of the state that have greater opportunities for arts funding. The Arts program will provide special grant opportunities and give selected preference to these priority regions.
How do you define active participation?
We define active participation as the experience of making or practicing art. Active participation is the other end of the spectrum from observational participation, where one views or watches what someone else has created (such as visiting a museum exhibit or going to see a play).
Does the Irvine Foundation now favor active participation over observational participation and classical arts?
Active participation and classical arts are not mutually exclusive—there are many classical music makers and singers who engage in the arts quite actively!
With our new strategy, we are aiming to find greater balance between our support for observational and participatory arts engagement. We believe this new strategy, in tandem with other priorities around who engages and where engagement takes place, will help us reach our goal of increasing arts engagement for all Californians.
Will you be making grants to organizations that are not current Arts program grantees?
Yes, our Exploring Engagement Fund will utilize an open competitive process for award selection and will be the only open competitive fund that we will offer statewide in 2012. We are still developing additional grantmaking funds to be announced in 2012 and beyond and those may be open to organizations that are not current Irvine grantees.
On what research have you based the new Arts program strategy?
In developing our new strategies, the research we have found most useful are:
- Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active Participation (WolfBrown, 2011)
Read the full report.
- Arts, Culture and Californians: Charting Arts Participation and Organizations in a Vast, Diverse State (Ann Markusen/Markusen Economic Research, 2011)
Read the highlights from the full report or read the full report.
- Beyond Attendance: A Multi-Modal Understanding of Arts Participation (Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Alan Brown of WolfBrown, 2011)
Read the full report.
- Cultural Connects All: Rethinking Audiences in Times of Demographic Change (Partners for Livable Communities, 2011)
Read the full report.
- Cultural Engagement in California’s Inland Regions (WolfBrown and the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, 2008)
Read the Executive Briefing.
Read the full report.
- Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California: A Working Paper from The James Irvine Foundation (The James Irvine Foundation and AEA Consulting, 2006)
Read the full report.
My organization currently receives Irvine funding and is doing the kind of work you describe in your new strategy. Are we still eligible for funding?
Some arts organizations are continually finding ways to adapt and thrive in the changing arts landscape. These organizations can serve as models for others throughout the state and the Foundation will support some of these under funding in the new strategy.
Will the Irvine Foundation help organizations adapt to its new Arts program strategy?
Yes. The core of our new strategy is to support organizations to build their ability to adapt, particularly those that see expanding arts engagement as a catalyst and mechanism to become more nimble organizations that can respond to the demographic and technological changes underway in California.
Why are you supporting arts engagement in non-arts venues?
While there are many arts venues throughout the state, our research and experience indicate that bringing arts programs to multi-use spaces is an underutilized opportunity to target and engage a wider audience of Californians, particularly in areas of the state that lack a developed arts infrastructure.
Organizations that are interested in exploring ideas represented by our new strategy will find a host of innovative ways to translate them into projects that fit with how they operate.
When are you going to announce your funding guidelines, and when will funding begin?
The Foundation has conducted a number of significant grantmaking transitions over its history and we are structuring the transition in our Arts strategy to reflect Irvine's commitment to being thoughtful, responsible and transparent as we shift our priorities. Learning from past experience, we will allow for a transition period in which we will make some grants that are aligned with the existing strategy while also initiating grantmaking based on the new strategy.
In 2011 we continued to make grants under the former strategy, which included the final round of Creative Connections Fund. In 2012, we will continue to make grants aligned with the former strategy while at the same time we will begin to make our first grants under the new strategy.
We have announced the first grantmaking fund under the new strategy, the Exploring Engagement Fund, an open competitive fund for California-based nonprofit arts organizations that have an annual operating budget between $100,000 and $5 million. Please read more about the application process, eligibility requirements and frequently asked questions.
Guidelines for additional grantmaking programs will be developed over the course of 2012 and beyond and published on our website as they are developed.
How can I apply for a grant under the new strategy?
The Exploring Engagement Fund is the first new grantmaking fund we will offer under our new Arts strategy and will be the only open competitive fund that we will offer statewide. You can read more about that fund, including eligibility requirements and how to apply. We are still developing additional grantmaking funds to be announced in 2012 and beyond.
Do you have a question you don't see answered here? Or do you have a suggestion for a Frequently Asked Question we should add to this list? Email us at
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