Grants to Professional Musicians - Individuals
The Canada Council for the Arts is committed to equity and inclusion, and welcomes applications from diverse Aboriginal, cultural and regional communities, including people with disabilities.
Deadlines
1 November (Short-Term Grant)
1 March (Long-Term or Short-Term Grant)
If either of these dates falls on a weekend or statutory holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day.
Your completed application and all required support material must be postmarked on or before the deadline date.
Please refer to the Program Guidelines for detailed information.
Program Description
This program offers opportunities to individual professional Canadian musicians to pursue their artistic and creative development. Professional musicians include instrumentalists, singers, composers, arrangers, singers/songwriters, performers, conductors and opera stage directors.
The program has two components:
- Long-Term Grants are available for a seven to twelve month period.
- Short-Term Grants are available for a maximum period of six months.
General Fields of Music
The Canada Council recognizes that there are well over 100 genres of music in Canada but it uses the term “general fields of music” for its categorization needs. Applicants will be asked to identify their specific genre of music.
Professional musicians whose practices are in the following general fields of music are eligible:
- Aboriginal
- Classical/contemporary
- Electroacoustic/Audio art
- Folk/traditional
- Improvised/Musique actuelle
- Instrumental
- Jazz
- Songwriting
- World.
A studio-apartment at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris is also available (to applicants to the Long-Term Grants component only) at a moderate cost.
It may be used for a period of three months to one year, from 1 September to
31 August.
Applicant Eligibility
Note that meeting the eligibility criteria does not guarantee that you will receive a grant.
For this program, applicants cannot apply to two consecutive deadlines.
To apply to the Canada Council for the Arts, you must be a Canadian citizen or have Permanent Resident status, as defined by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. You do not need to be living in Canada when you apply.
You must also meet the Canada Council’s definition of a professional artist, which is an artist who:
- has specialized training in the field (not necessarily in academic institutions)
- is recognized as a professional by his or her peers (professional artists working in the same artistic tradition)
- is committed to devoting more time to artistic activity, if possible financially
- has a history of ongoing public presentation in a professional context.
To apply to this program, you must also meet the eligibility requirements of one of the following categories of applicants:
- Emerging artists are those who have completed their basic training (university graduation or equivalent in specialized or self-training). They must have had an active professional career for at least two years, in addition to performances while in academic settings or as part of specialized training programs.
- Mid-career artists are no longer full-time students and must have completed their formal studies at least five years before applying to this program. They must have had an active professional career for at least five years.
- Established artists are those who have made a nationally or internationally recognized contribution to music over a number of years and are still active in their profession.
Collaborative creation projects
You can use these grants to work with another artist (from the same artistic discipline), but only on creation projects. There can be only two artists involved in collaborative creation projects, and both must meet the program’s eligibility criteria.
We consider a project as collaboration when both artists share the artistic control of the project.
Project eligibility
You can use these grants:
- for advanced studies in composition or performance, privately or at an institution (the Canada Council considers advanced studies to be those beyond a Bachelor of Music degree or equivalent private or self-training)
- to compose (personal creative projects only)
- to arrange (personal arranging projects only)
- to research new forms of music or new repertoire that will be used in the performance or composition of new works
- for collaborative creation projects involving no more than two musicians (for example, projects can involve two composers, or a composer and a librettist/lyricist)
- to attend workshops/master classes for individual professional artistic development
Grant Amount
Long-term grants: Up to $24,000 is available for long-term projects
Short-term grants: Up to $12,000 is available for short-term projects
Further Information
Classical and electroacoustic fields of music:
André Jutras, Program Officer
1-800-263-5588 (toll-free) or 613-566-4414, ext. 5071
All other fields of music:
Claire Marchand, Program Officer
1-800-263-5588 (toll-free) or 613-566-4414, ext. 4294
TTY: 1-866-585-5559
October 2012