Creative Economies Workshop Series: Project Budgets & Art Economies

Project Budgets & Art Economies: How to Create a Budget for a Grant Application 

This workshop will explore how money flows between foundations, non-profit organizations, institutions, worker cooperatives, collectives, and private art galleries. Using this information, we will dissect a range of real-world project budgets from successful grant applications (reflecting various project scales) to create a comprehensive list of categories and some common dollar amounts that participants can use to design their own project budget. Alongside these practical skills, we will touch on a few social and discursive concerns such as the ethical elements of choosing and communicating with sites, community partners, and funders. Emphasis will be made on applying these skills to art & cultural grant-funded applications while acknowledging that participants will apply them in diverse situations requiring varied time scales, resources, and collaborators, etc.

Learning Outcomes: 

• Understand the financial dynamics among foundations, non-profits, institutions, cooperatives, collectives, and galleries in grant applications.
• Acquire practical skills in dissecting successful grant project budgets to create comprehensive categories and determine common dollar amounts for various project scales.
• Address social and ethical considerations in selecting and communicating with sites, partners, and funders, emphasizing the application of budgeting skills to diverse art and cultural grant-funded projects.

Instructor:

Stephanie Bursese uses photography, sculpture, textiles, and site-specific installation to investigate perspective, memory, and trust. Her work has appeared in numerous group and solo exhibitions, publications, and museums-nationally and internationally-including The Aperture Foundation (NY), The Print Center (PA), Expo Chicago (IL), Cornell University (NY), Galerie Maison Kasini (Montreal), Everson Museum of Art (NY), Silver Eye Center for Photography (PA); and The University of Virginia (VA). She is represented in both private and public collections. She was selected for a residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in 2006. In 2013 she self-published her first book of photographs Razor Thin Rock Hard and released her second book, Belt and Brace, in 2015; in 2017 she was nominated for the MACK First Book Award. Bursese has taught in higher education for the last 18 years. She served as Program Manager for the Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives initiative, a $750K Mellon Foundation grant project (2017-2020), as a Grant Writer for We Are the Seeds (2020-2023), and is currently a Co-Director & Curator of the Pew-funded project “Teaching at the End of Times”. She has worked with numerous national and local foundations, institutions, funders, and international artists as a collaborator and organizer. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Florida in Photography/Art History and received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Syracuse University. Bursese lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.

Host or Publisher Vox Populi