Creative Capital

Creative Capital is a New York City-based national nonprofit that provides awards and advisory services to artists in 34 different disciplines, including visual art, performing arts, moving image and literature. Artists receive the Awards through an open application process.

Creative Capital
AbbreviationCreative Capital
Formation1999
Founded atNew York City
HeadquartersNew York City
Location
  • New York City
Executive Director
Suzy Delvalle
WebsiteCreative-Capital.org

History

Creative Capital was founded in 1999 with Ruby Lerner as founding director, president and Executive Director. As of May 2016 the Executive Director is Suzy Delvalle.[1]

In its first year Creative Capital accepted 1,810 applications.[2] It was founded in part to offer support to artists affected by the National Endowment for the Arts's (NEA) cuts to funding for individual artists in the 1990s.[3]

Business model and artist services

On March 24, 2010, the Harvard Business School published a case study of the Creative Capital business model titled "Creative Capital: Sustaining the Arts." In a description of the study, authors G. Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon wrote about Creative Capital’s use of a venture capital model, investing in their awardees with money as well as advice on managing their careers so that they can continue improving their careers after spending the award.[4] Creative Capital stipulates that awardees whose projects make a profit return a portion of it to the organization. Many Creative Capital awardees become advisors for new awardees.

Creative Capital's approach centers on the idea that time and advisory services are as important to the creative process as money. As awardees' funded projects develop, Creative Capital staff meet with them to set goals and chart progress. Creative Capital provides funding at benchmark moments for each project, including initial funding, support to build the artist’s personal and professional capacity, follow-up support for project production, funding for the project’s premiere, and support for the project’s expansion after its premiere.[5] Of this type of support, Sheryl Oring, a Creative Capital awardee, has said, "For mid-career artists like me, Creative Capital can help make the difference between whether we keep making art or give up."[3]

Awardees

Creative Capital Award recipients
Main article: List of Creative Capital Grant recipients

Notable awardees include

Emerging Fields

Moving Image

Literature

Performing Arts

Visual Arts

Retreat

After each new round of awardees is announced, Creative Capital hosts a retreat for their artists, including the most recently announced awardees, those from the previous round, other awardees as consultants as well as people connected to Creative Capital in various ways who act as consultants, workshop leaders or observers. In various workshops and meetings with consultants, artists are advised on how to plan the next five years of their artistic careers as well their personal lives.[3]

Creative Capital hosts a variety of events for its awardees to meet each other and others within the artistic community. Paddy Johnson has written in her arts blog, Art Fag City, "These conferences offer grantees an amazing opportunity to connect with other artists and a wide range of curators, distributors, and artistic directors through mixers, meetings with consultants, and artist presentations. They also ask grantees to return to the conference every couple of years, which keeps them in touch with a constantly expanding network of creative art folk."[6]

Professional Development Program

In 2003 Creative Capital founded its Professional Development Program (PDP), which offers a series of evening-, one-day- or weekend-length workshops for artists on marketing, strategic planning, self-management, fundraising, and web strategies. In both presenting these workshops in person nationally and broadcasting some online in the form of "webinars," the program shares skills taught to Creative Capital grantees with other artists across the U.S. The workshops have been described as a “crash course in self-management, strategic planning, fundraising and promotion.”[7]

References
  1. Barone, Joshua (10 May 2016). "Creative Capital Chooses Susan Delvalle as President and Executive Director". Retrieved 5 March 2018 – via NYTimes.com.
  2. Dobrzynski, Judith (25 August 1999). "1,810 Artists Seek Grants From a New Foundation". New York Times. New York Times. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  3. Murphy, Tim. "Bohemian Boot Camp". nymag.com. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  4. Hardymon, G. Felda; Ann Leamon (March 24, 2010). "Creative Capital: Sustaining the Arts". Harvard Business Review: 24. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  5. "Our Approach". Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  6. Johnson, Paddy. "Expanding The Creative Capital Network". Art Fag City. Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  7. Johnson, Annie (3 June 2011). "Workshop brings 'creative capital'". Nashville Business Journal. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
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