Center for Craft Research Fund Grants

The Center for Craft invests in makers and teaching artists, researchers and scholars, and curators. Its grant programs build a future for craft by providing vital resources to catalyze craft communities and amplify craft’s impact in the United States.

The Center for Craft defines craft as a particular approach to making with a strong connection to materials, skill, and process. Artists, makers, scholars, and curators continue to grow the field, embracing new definitions, technologies, and ideas while honoring craft’s history and relationship to the handmade.

Craft, in all its forms, demonstrates creativity, ingenuity, and practical intelligence. It contributes to the economic and social wellbeing of communities, connects us to our cultural histories, and is integral to building a sustainable future.

Craft Archive Fellowship

Up to 6 fellowships of $5,000 will be awarded to support archival research on underrepresented and non-dominant craft histories in the United States. It aims to foster archival research on underrepresented and non-dominant craft histories in the United States, such as feminist, intersectional, queer, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and other communities and approaches that may not be specifically listed here. Up to 6 Center for Craft Archive Fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend to conduct research in an archive of their choosing. These Fellows may engage in both conventional and innovative approaches to archival research.

Archives are repositories for and collections of primary source materials where people can conduct research. However, the histories preserved and stored within institutional libraries and archives often reflect the dominant cultural narratives, limiting the types of histories that can be told. Therefore, this fellowship takes an expansive understanding of what an archive is, to delimit what an archive can be. For the purpose of this grant, the Center for Craft understands archival craft research to be, but not limited to:

• Digital and in-person archives: Recipients can direct their research towards a digital or site-specific archive, such as institutional archives that feature underrepresented craft communities. An in-person visit is not required.
• Objects as archives, the study of a new collection of materials, such as oral histories, community-created archives, site or place as an archive.
• Funding from this grant can be used to visit more than one archive, as funding and time permits. However, engagement with just one archive is all that is expected.

Craft Research Fund Project Grant

Grants up to $15,000 awarded to support projects that encourage and expand scholarly craft research in the United States. Supports research, writing, support documentation, image reproduction and copyright fees, as part of crafts research yet to be completed.

Proposals are welcome from applicants including but not limited to organizations, curators, artist-researchers, independent and academic researchers, and scholars.

• This grant is intended to support research and is not for the creation of artwork ‍
• This grant is not provide funding for already completed research or the dissemination of already completed research

Examples of scholarly craft research might include:

• Research providing new insight into work by historical or contemporary craft in the U.S.
• Projects presenting a new understanding of the relationship between handmade production and digital technologies
• Providing a new contribution to the history of craft in the United States
• Projects that place American craft in a global context
• Or other topics that offer fresh perspectives within craft