Thanks to the lovely people over at GrantStation, the deadlines for two interesting arts related funding opportunities came to my attention.

The first is community based grant program administered by Union Pacific. Essentially if you live west of the Mississippi River and have train tracks running through your town you are probably in a Union-Pacific community and are eligible.

The second is some what more interesting. Johnson Johnson/Society for the Arts in Healthcare are looking for programs that “promotes the evaluation and replication of promising models in order to strengthen and expand the arts in healthcare field.” The most difficult eligibility criterion appears to be membership in the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. Otherwise they are primarily interested in programs that have been in existence 3 years or longer and that can be replicated on a national level.

When I saw this, I immediately thought of a program in Brooklyn I had written about three years ago. At the time the hospital, Woodhull Medical Center, was offering inexpensive health care for artists in exchange for their performance or interactions in the wards and units. They may have expanded the program since then. In any case, I sent the grant information to Laura Colby who is mentioned in the NY Foundation for the Arts article referenced in my entry. What she helped start would definitely be a boon to artists if it were rolled out nationwide.

Hopefully some of my readers out there have some similarly good ideas or at least know of some being enacted right now.