Grant Writing Basics: Beginner's Guide to Grants for Independent Musicians

Bay Area bassist/bandleader and arts organizer Lisa Mezzacappa leads an introductory workshop on grants for independent musicians. This is the pre-K, absolute beginner’s guide to finding and writing grants to support your work.
Learn what opportunities are available for musicians, composers and ensembles in the Bay Area; how to prepare your materials and navigate applications; how to assemble a basic project budget and write a project proposal; strategies for preparing work samples; and how to find funders that are a good match for the work you want to do. If you have already applied for and received grants before, this is probably not the workshop for you! This workshop hopes to demystify the grant application process for the fearful/curious, and will address beginner questions and concerns. Come prepared with a laptop or pencil and notebook to take notes.
Light refreshments provided at 4 PM; workshop begins at 4:30 PM.

About the workshop instructor

In a storied career as an academic, journalist, arts administrator and independent musician, Lisa Mezzacappa has been communicating about the arts, in different formats, for more than 15 years. She was a critic and arts reporter for a daily newspaper in New York before pursing an academic degree in ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley. She subsequently worked as Communications Director at New Langton Arts, and Marketing Manager, then Campus Programs Manager at Stanford Lively Arts. She curates the annual Jazzpop series at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, and has organized many independent music series, including the Monday Makeout, the Best Coast Jazz Composers Series and Mission Eye & Ear. She has also been involved in strategic planning and communications strategy at Headlands Center for the Arts, and works as a freelance copywriter, publicist, grantwriter and marketing consultant for organizations including Cal Performances, Oakland Ballet, Kronos Quartet, Dimensions Dance Theater and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. As a composer and ensemble leader, she has been awarded grants from the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Wattis Foundation, American Composers Forum, the City of Oakland, Meet the Composer and Southern Exposure/the Andy Warhol Foundation.

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This workshop is presented in partnership with San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music.