New York City doubles its grants for artists and small arts nonprofits to $10,000
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Oct. 2 that the city-funded grants the borough arts councils give to artists, collectives and small nonprofits can now reach $10,000, up from $5,000. Brooklyn's deadline is Oct. 11; Staten Island opens in November.
New York. New York City will double the largest grant it funds for individual artists, artist collectives and small arts nonprofits, from $5,000 to $10,000, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Oct. 2. His office said it is the first increase in the size of the awards in nearly 20 years.
The money comes from the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, which each year passes funding to a local partner in each of the five boroughs. Those partners choose the grantees and pay out the grants to filmmakers, dancers, writers, painters and other artists. The mayor's office said the cost of living in the city has risen sharply over two decades while the grant funding available to artists has not.
Deadlines by borough
Applications are open in four boroughs. The Brooklyn Arts Council takes them until Oct. 11, the Bronx Council on the Arts until Oct. 30, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, for Manhattan, until Nov. 12, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, which runs the Queens Arts Fund, until Nov. 17. Staten Island Arts opens its cycle in November.
Each partner sets its own rules on who may apply. In the Bronx, the council's Arts Fund, supported by the department in partnership with the City Council, is open to Bronx-based individual artists, artist collectives and 501(c)(3) arts organizations with budgets below $100,000, according to its guidelines.
“This change gives arts councils greater flexibility to make meaningful awards that reflect the needs of their communities.”
Free materials for grantees
Artists who hold a current grant from one of the five arts councils will also get a monthly shopping day at Materials for the Arts, the department's program that collects about 4 million pounds of materials a year and gives them free of charge to nonprofits, public schools and city agencies with cultural programming. Grantees book the visit through their arts council. The mayor's announcement puts the day on the first Monday of each month starting in October; the department's own page says the second Monday, except holidays.
Diya Vij, the cultural affairs commissioner, called the larger grants and the free materials a first step toward deeper support for artists, after six months of town halls and listening sessions with artists in every borough.
The department's budget for fiscal 2027 is the largest in the city's history, the mayor's office said. Hyperallergic reported that the budget agreement with the City Council set it at $323.8 million.
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