Individual Excellence Awards

April 13, 2023 | Agency Image by Donald Black, Jr., 2023 Individual Excellence Award Recipient Recognizing Individual Artistic Achievement The Individual Excellence Awards program recognizes outstanding accomplishments by artists in a variety of disciplines. Awards give artists the resources to experiment and explore their art forms, develop skills and advance their careers, and receive affirmation and acknowledgment for outstanding work. Competitive applications focus on the merit of past artistic work. GRANT AWARDS Individual Excellence Awards are $5,000. ELIGIBILITY Creative artists who are residents of Ohio may apply to this program. Additional eligibility requirements include: Applicants must be at least 18 years of age. Applicants must have lived in Ohio for one year prior to the September 1 application deadline and must remain a resident of the state throughout the grant period. Students attending high school or students pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees at the time of application may not apply. Artists may submit only one application per calendar year (excluding Criticism applicants) Note: Artists applying in the Criticism discipline may submit a second application for a separate body of work, but an applicant may only receive one Individual Excellence Award per year even if panels recommend the applicant in both disciplines. After receiving an Individual Excellence Award, recipients are not eligible to apply at the next deadline (e.g., a FY 2026 music composition award recipient may not apply at the FY 2027 deadline in photography, etc.). Past work that resulted in an Individual Excellence Award may not be resubmitted at future deadlines; resubmission of funded work will result in disqualification from the review process. Artwork created primarily using artificial intelligence (AI) will not be accepted. Note: Recipients of Individual Excellence Awards are ineligible to apply for an Artist Opportunities or Artist with Disabilities Access Program award for five years. HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS Individual Excellence Awards recognize the exceptional merit of an Ohio artist’s past body of work. Awards celebrate the creativity and imagination that exemplify the highest level of achievement in a particular artistic discipline. Awards may be used for a variety of expenses related to an artist’s growth and development. Awards may not be used for enrolling in or continuing a degree-granting program, and recipients must remain a resident of Ohio during the grant year. After accepting the grant award in ARTIE, grantees will receive the full payment. The grant is complete once a final report is received and approved. OAC staff may request additional information regarding grant activities. HOW TO APPLY Individual Excellence Awards program applications must be submitted via the ARTIE system. Please refer to Appendix G for a step-by-step look at applying for, accepting, and managing a grant through this program. Collaborative Applications: Up to two artists who worked together to create a body of work may apply collaboratively, with each artist retaining creative ownership of the completed artwork. Both artists must be Ohio residents. Only one artist should apply, naming the second artist in the application; if awarded an Individual Excellence Award, each artist will receive half of the award. EVALUATION AND SCORING Applications are reviewed through an anonymous review process. An open review conducted by a panel of diverse and nationally known professionals evaluate and score Individual Excellence Award applications. Panel meetings are open to the public through a free video conferencing platform. Applicants are strongly encouraged to listen online. For details on panel meeting dates, times, and instructions for participating, visit the OAC online grants calendar. During the virtual panel meeting, panelists discuss how well each application satisfies the program’s evaluation criteria, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the support materials/art works and narrative statements. Panelists use a simple scoring system to evaluate and score applications, with each of seven criteria rated as: 1) not competitive, 2) adequate to strong, or 3) exemplary. Following the public discussion, each panelist enters a final score for each application. Later, OAC staff use averages of these scores to determine funding award recommendations. The OAC Board is the only body authorized to make final funding decisions and approve funding recommendations. The review process is competitive, and not all applications are funded. REVIEW CRITERIA Panelists use the following criteria (presented in no particular order) to make funding recommendations: Work exemplifies the highest level of achievement in a discipline Outstanding technical proficiency or craftsmanship is displayed Body of work is consistently high in quality Creative or inventive use of the medium advances the art form Work compares favorably to other work in the field Artist narrative provides context for the body of work Supporting materials are relevant and of high quality SUPPORT MATERIALS Support materials are a critical part of each Individual Excellence Awards application. Materials are submitted electronically to the ARTIE system with your completed application by the program deadline date. Due to the anonymous nature of the review process, applicants must remove any instance of their name and all biographical information from both submitted work and narrative statement. All uploaded materials must follow a file naming convention that begins with the applicant’s unique application number, followed by the title of the uploaded artwork (‘Application Number_Title’). Discipline-Specific Support Materials Screening notes may be included with the support materials to aid the presentation of the materials for applications in choreography, music composition, media, and interdisciplinary disciplines. If submitting digital images or work samples, see t