Today, the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation opened applications for the 2025 Spark Award for Oregon Artists. The Spark Award for Oregon Artists is inspired by the Foundation’s belief that the self-directed pursuit by professional artists of new ideas, opportunities and skills is essential to our state’s cultural vitality.
The three-year pilot program is investing $1.5M in direct support to midcareer individual artists. Through this program, the Foundation is awarding grants of $25,000 each to 60 individual artists in total (20 grants per year) across artistic disciplines. In 2025, recipients will be artists creating original work in the literary and media arts, and applications are open from today until 5pm PDT on July 2. The 2024 awardees are artists working in the performing arts, and images and profiles for these artists are available at https://www.millerfound.org/grants/spark-award-recipients. 2026 awardees will be artists working in the visual arts.
The goals of the program are 1) to support the creative development of professional artists; and 2) to create career advancement opportunities for Oregon artists. The Foundation will award a total of $500,000 each year ($25,000 per grantee) to 20 midcareer artists in each year of the pilot program, providing flexible funding for their overall creative development, rather than tying the award funds to completion of a specific project. Panels comprised of national and Oregon-based literary and media arts professionals will recommend a roster of awardees for approval by the Foundation Board of Directors.
During the 2025 application window, Miller Foundation staff will offer information sessions (recorded and on-demand), support sessions (live and virtual), and 1:1 support appointments (via Zoom) for interested applicants. Details on those sessions can be found at https://www.millerfound.org/spark.
Foundation Board President Peter Koehler said, “As the Miller Foundation enters its third decade of grantmaking in Oregon, we remain committed to supporting artists and arts organizations as the bedrock of vibrant, creative communities in our state. We are honored to invest in the creative development of our state’s diverse roster of writers, filmmakers, and interdisciplinary media and literary artists.”
This story is based on submitted information and has not been verified by our news team.
This article appears in Source Weekly May 15, 2025.
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