2020 Micro-grants for Emerging and Diverse Professionals

Applications are currently closed. Applications were accepted from August 17 until September 18, 2020.

Do you have new ideas and experiences to share? We want to hear your voice! The BCMA is excited to offer micro-grants to support emerging and diverse museum, arts, and cultural professionals to share their ideas with members, galleries, and heritage organizations across British Columbia and beyond.

Due to COVID-19, the BC Museums Association (BCMA) has been unable to deliver its regular regional workshops around the province and we are using this opportunity to reallocate funding to support museum professionals with diverse experiences and ideas to create new online resources, workshops, and networking events.

What Are We Looking For? We’re Looking for You!

Through these micro-grants, we hope to encourage new voices and ideas by supporting content proposals from diverse and emerging museum professionals. These proposals can range from webinar presentations (view our YouTube Channel for examples of recent webinars), networking ideas (like Watercooler Wednesday or the BCMA trivia night), written resources (view Tools and Resources for examples), or other ideas for online content that would support members across the province.

We encourage proposals from emerging museum professionals and diverse professionals (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and those with disabilities). We also encourage submissions from museum professionals who have been laid off, furloughed, or have had their employment impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’ve been interested in the BCMA but haven’t participated in our programs in the past, this is a great opportunity to share your unique perspective!

Funding Available

The Association has allocated $4,000 to support the creation of new online resources and events and will offer two types of micro-grants:

• $500 “short” proposals
  • “Short” proposals are for activities that take between 10-20 hours to plan and deliver, this could include webinars, blog post-style resources, one-off networking events, etc.
• $1,000 “medium” proposals
  • “Medium” proposals are for activities that take between 20-40 hours to plan and deliver, this could include a brief webinar series, longer-form written resources, multi-part networking events, etc.

How We Will Evaluate Proposals

Priority will be given to emerging professionals, professionals with diverse lived experiences, and professionals whose employment has been impacted by COVID-19. Through these micro-grants, we hope to support voices who are not typically heard, so preference will be given to applicants who are working with the BCMA for the first time and applicants from parts of the province that are typically underrepresented.

Applications are currently closed. Applications were accepted from August 17 until September 18, 2020.

Once accepted, proposals must be carried out before March 31, 2021.

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Lorenda Calvert, BCMA Program Coordinator, programs@museum.bc.ca.