nici /nea

For This Year

CHALLENGE AMERICA: REACHING EVERY COMMUNITY FAST-TRACK REVIEW GRANTS

The Challenge America: Reaching Every Community Fast-Track Review Grants category offers support primarily to small and mid-sized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to underserved populations - those whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability. Age alone (e.g., youth, seniors) does not qualify a group as underserved; at least one of the underserved characteristics noted here also must be present. This category, as an essential component of the Arts Endowment's goal of providing wide access to artistic excellence, supports local projects that can have significant effects within communities. Grants are available for professional arts programming and for projects that emphasize the potential of the arts in community development.

Postmarked June 1, 2006

LEARNING IN THE ARTS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

The National Endowment for the Arts is committed to the goal of enabling all Americans to enrich their lives through the arts. The critical gateway to a lifetime of appreciation of and engagement with the arts is a high quality education in the arts. Learning in the arts is vital for two reasons: It invites children to celebrate and participate in a central part of their cultural inheritance, and it is an important contributing factor in the development of social and academic skills.

Postmarked June 12, 2006

For Next Year Maybe...

Save America's Treasures

Collections and historic properties must be nationally signficant in order to be eligible for a Save America's Treasures grant. The quality of national significance is ascribed to collections and historic properties that possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the intellectual and cultural heritage and the built environment of the United States, that possess a high degree of integrity and that:

• Are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to, and are identified with, or that outstandingly represent the broad patterns of United States history and culture and from which an understanding and appreciation of those patterns may be gained; or,
• Are associated importantly with the lives of persons nationally significant in the United States history or culture; or,
• Represent great historic, cultural, artistic or scholarly ideas or ideals of the American people; or,
• Embody the distinguishing characteristics of a resource type that: Is exceptionally valuable for the study of a period or theme of United States history or culture; or

Represents a significant, distinctive and exceptional entity whose components may lack individual distinction but that collectively form an entity of exceptional historical, artistic or cultural significance (e.g., an historic district with national significance), or Outstandingly commemorates or illustrates a way of life or culture; or,

• Have yielded or may yield information of major importance by revealing or by shedding light upon periods or themes of United States history or culture.