The tinygrants catalogue is here! If you donated $100 or more, your complementary copy is in the mail. The remaining copies of this very limited edition will be sold for $25. You can buy a copy by donating $25 via PayPal (scroll to the “Online” section). You will be contacted to confirm your mailing address and a copy will be shipped to you!

The catalogue is a 52-page, full colour foray into the tinygrants experiment. It details the process of the project, discusses the larger implications with regard to cultural policy and arts funding, and highlights the artists’ projects with interviews and lots of photos.

Digital copies of the catalogue (PDF) can be purchased for $5 using the PayPal donation button as well. Please include a current email address in the comments section.

It is very exciting to finally have the catalogue in my hands–I look forward to sharing it with you!

Production of the tinygrants catalogue is underway! The above image is a detail from the cover (for now, anyway). The book will be 7″ x 7″, 64-pages, and mostly colour, and will include a curatorial essay, interviews with the artists, and details about the project logistics (such as how submissions were solicited and how the projects were selected). Don’t forget — you can get a copy of this catalogue as a thanks for donating $100 or more to the project.

It’s pretty exciting to start putting all of this together, even though it’s also an enormous challenge. How do I start thinking about tinygrants as a project that begins and ends? Last semester I was abuzz with a lot of administrative tasks for tinygrants. This semester, I have to shift gears to think about the social and political implications of a microfunding program for the arts. It’s not that these things weren’t on my mind throughout the submissions and selection processes, but now I have to commit to something!

If you have any ideas for what else should be included in the catalogue, please do let me know! I will be posting updates about how the book is coming together, including a working table of contents once that is a little closer to being set in stone.

* 02/15/10 – I’ve been meaning to update this post with a correction for some time now. In the interview, I talked about how student-artists are ineligible to apply for funding through municipal, provincial and federal councils. I also mentioned that it was possible for tinygrants to receive funding as non-profit organization. And for some reason I said I would be ineligible to apply for operational funding through this avenue as a student, which is completely false. Registering tinygrants as a non-profit would mean incorporating tinygrants as an entity, thereby making my status as a student irrelevant to the eligibility of tinygrants (as an organization) for funding. Just wanted to clear that up and apologize for the error.

Here are a few things coming up -

• Grant recipient announcement
• Posts about my research (urban intervention, relational practice, microcredit, funding policy)
• Next steps for tinygrants
• December fundraising goal

Thanks for following the project!

I can’t believe how quickly the last six weeks have flown by, but here we are — the deadline for applications is TOMORROW. Applications should be submitted by email no later than 11:59 PM on Sunday, November 22, 2009. Click here to read more about applying and to download an application.

Check out the interview I did with Greg J. Smith over at Vague Terrain: Marissa Neave on tinygrants: an Experiment in Microfunding.

I expect that adjudication could be completed within a few hours, and it would need to take place between Tuesday, November 24th and Monday, December 1st. Location will be determined shortly, but will be in downtown Toronto. Compensation can be provided in the form of beer, snacks, buttons and acknowledgments on the website and in the catalogue.

If you’re interested in being on the jury, email me and tell me why. I don’t expect potential jury members to have any jury experience in particular, but I am looking for people who understand the tinygrants project and are interested in the type of work it encourages.

I look forward to hearing from you!

My apologies for any confusion.

Applications are due no later than 11:59 PM on Sunday, November 22, 2009.

Click here to read more, or just download the application already!