Micro-Grants Available to Support Emerging and Diverse Museum Professionals to Create Online Resources, Workshops, and Networking Events

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 they 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.

Through these micro-grants, they 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 their YouTube Channel for examples of recent webinars), networking ideas (like Watercooler Wednesday or the BCMA trivia night), written resources (view the BCMA BRAIN for examples), or other ideas for online content that would support members across the province.

They encourage proposals from emerging museum professionals and diverse professionals (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and those with disabilities). They also encourage submissions from museum professionals who have been laid off, furloughed, or have had their employment impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Funding Available

The Association has allocated $4,000.00 to support the creation of new online resources and events and will offer two types of micro-grants:

  • $500.00 “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.
  • $1,000.00 “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 They 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. 

Application Deadlines

Applications will be 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@museumsassn.bc.ca.