Rocket Grants award up to $4,000 to individuals and groups of artists for high quality, innovative and public-oriented artwork that happens outside of typical galleries, museums and arts districts. Artists are encouraged to address the community at large, to strengthen the arts community, or to choose a smaller, targeted audience. Rocket Grants also support proposals by artists or groups who are interested in expanding studio practice in new ways, and developing new audiences.
This is the third year for the awards, in which a total of $40,000 will be distributed to artists living within an 80-mile radius of metropolitan Kansas City. Completed and in-progress projects from the 2010 and 2011 funding cycles can been seen at rocketgrants.wordpress.com. The program is funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and is implemented by a partnership between the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, and the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas.
Call for Applications
(45 KB PDF)
All applications must be completed online through www.callforentry.org. The deadline is April 1, 2012.
Application Guide
Budget Forms
Instructions
Frequently Asked Questions
2011 Artists & Projects
2010 Artists & Projects
Daniel Eichenbaum*, Bob Riddle, Cheryl Melfi, Richard Johnson, Rebecca Ashe: Dark Matter presents “Ascent”
A community-built balloon will carry high-resolution cameras to the edge of space, connecting local artists and scientists in the process. The resulting images will generate an hour-long performance featuring live electro-acoustic music and narration at Union Station's Gottlieb Planetarium.
Asma Kazmi: Playing Gender
This is a transdisciplinary art project celebrating the precarious fabrication of gender artifice and exaggeration. It will consist of documentary footage and reconstructed audio/visual material gathered from research in India among the hijra community, live performances, workshops, and programmed discussions on issues of gender construction, sexuality and ritual.
Caitlin Horsman: Resistant History
This project aims to reframe political reform as a local activity by collecting stories of progressive change in the Kansas City area and making them available via the web to educators, citizens and artists. Resistant History will map sites of change in the history of our region through the creation of a group of films, a collection of documentation, and a series of downloadable neighborhood “tours” that engage the viewer in the urban environment.
Nicole Mauser*, Cory Imig, Amy Kligman, Misha Kligman & Caleb Taylor: Plug Projects
This is an artist-run curatorial collaboration designed to nurture critical dialogue, expand the scope of art being shown in the area, and cross-pollinate regional and national artists in Kansas City. It involves a new collective exhibition space, a “critique night” series, experimental curatorial practices and an online presence.
Judith Levy: NV in KC
Levy will work with videographers, actors, non-actors, artists and musicians in Lawrence and Kansas City to create a faux documentary that examines difficult subject matter with wit and humanity. This project will consist of an initial 20- to 30-minute video episode, followed by five additional 15-minute episodes, featuring a story that humorously explores envy as a motivating force in a regional arts community.
Elizabeth Lovett* & Yair Keshet: Discrete Curiosities
The artists will build a mathematically derived display system that will act as a postmodern Cabinet of Wonders. This display will travel to public spaces around Kansas City, and will juxtapose the work of regional (and a few national) artists together with that of scientists and other researchers. Each exhibit will be curated based on three thematic groupings, or “sets”.
Daniel Parks: Community Projection Week
The presentation of this project will occur over the course of one week. Each night, Parks will facilitate the creation of a unique projection art piece on the outside of a different community center or secondary school across the Kansas City Metro. These events will involve local residents in helping to create material and performances to celebrate their local community.
Eric Dobbins* & Kelly Clark: Field Trip Publishing
This project aims to inspire eight emerging Kansas City area artists to consider experimenting with new art making practices, collaboration, and marketing. It will engage new art audiences by producing affordable art multiples and maintaining a dynamic, active online presence, and will initiate active distribution in a way that will bolster the region's art market and provide further financial support to local artists.
Amber Hansen: The Story of Chickens: A Revolution
This project features a nomadic chicken coop, designed to be both functional and beautiful and to be inhabited by five heritage chickens. It will reconnect the community with its food cycle when the birds that people have tended are killed and eaten at a communal meal.
Julia Vering: You Live Here Too
This will be a multimedia performance utilizing video, stop-motion animation, an original score, and local senior citizens as actors and oral historians. The project examines the ways in which we construct identities and meaning through storytelling, congregated living and age-segregated recreation. Blurring truth and fiction through an absurd framework, participants will be given the opportunity to both become someone else, in the way that drama allows, and also reveal their true character through the sharing of personal histories.
A. Bitterman: Point of Interest
"Point of Interest" involves the installation of a 10-foot interpretive exhibit—resembling a national parks information booth—along the sidewalk in front of the artist’s home in Brookside, and the creation of a short hiking trail in the front yard.
Lisa Cordes: Prop 8 On Trial
"Prop 8 On Trial" is a multimedia performance examining the 2010 trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, challenging the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 that banned same-sex marriage.
Kurt Flecksing: The S'mores Grant Project
“The S'mores Grant Project” is a micro-grant opportunity available to artists working in the public realm. Funds are raised by selling s'mores from a street vending cart.
Patrick Giroux, Jonathan Holley, and Emily Lawton: Johnny America
“Johnny America” is a small literary ‘zine with a strong handmade visual and design aesthetic.
Jane Gotch, Ke-Sook Lee, Miles Neidinger, Paul Rudy, Mark Southerland, Mica Thomas, and Jason Dixon: WE!
“WE!” is a collaborative, multimedia dance performance that strips away the safety net of the proscenium theater and sandwiches both dancer and viewer into a close-proximity, private performance space.
Audrey Lauber, Brooke Hunt, and Tomomi Suenaga: Endless Boundless
Through the “Endless Boundless” program, children will be immersed in interactive, interdisciplinary art workshops culminating in a community presentation of their collaborative efforts.
Seth Johnson and Ashley Miller: The Center for the Advancement of Transmodern Awareness
“The Center for the Advancement of Transmodern Awareness” is a multi-use space dedicated to promoting the evolution of culture by creating of new systems of social exchange.
Jarrett Mellenbruch: Deep Ecology 1
"Deep Ecology 1" is a functional beehive sculpture that invites contemplation on humankind's role in the earth's ecosystem.
Lee Piechocki, Aaron Storck, and Jeffrey Isom: ASP/SPA/PAS
Creation of a publication (“ASP/SPA/PAS”) designed to engage members of the art, philosophy, and scientific communities in critical dialogue.
May Tveit: Product Placement
“Product Placement” is a series of site-specific, sculptural, public art interventions/happenings.
Jaimie Warren, Cody Critcheloe, and Peggy Noland: Kansas City Christmas Special
The artists will create a new video project involving collectives and artists in the Kansas City area collaborating extensively with national artists who will be flown in for the project.
Leralee Whittle and Paul Sprawl: WorkArtOut
“WorkArtOut” identifies the institutionalized body in a performance installation, featuring video of Whittle making art in gyms across America.