Do You Need Funding?

Getting funding is an undertaking. Sometimes it's easier to look to the passionate people around you and see if you can all pitch in a small amount to get something going. When something's volunteered powered it actually makes it easier to get funding for stuff in the future, because you've proven A) you can get shit done, and B) there is a community around you that cares about this stuff too. This will make your future proposals more substantial and credible and give you a chance to see if you actually enjoy doing the thing before you're spending money on it. Using volunteer power ethically and effectively is beyond the scope of this doc, but it's possible to get good at it!

While it would be great to get paid to pursue a passion, in my experience it usually takes two years before I have enough credibility and community integration to actually get paid to do it.

What Kind of Funding is Available?

This will require a combination of internet research but also community outreach to people in your region. Regional difference are huge. In Canada, where I am, there's lots of funding for arts & culture, but just a bit to the south there is comparatively little public funding. Many regions don't have a lot of game arts entities, so consider talking to people in other arts disciplines or related industries who have received funding already. It's always easier to have money-related conversations with people who you've built trust, so ideally you will have either connected with them beforehand or you can ask someone who trusts you for an introduction. Sometimes social media can show mutuals.

Project funding for which you pitch an idea for a time-limited project is much more common than operational funding, which can pay for any ongoing operating costs (including office rental, salaries) of an organization. An org I founded got operational funding not too long ago, but it took almost a decade and many project funding approvals before the funder believed in the organization's artistic value.

Once you've made a list of possible funders, I usually put them in a spreadsheet and set a reminder to myself to look at any deadline a month prior. Rather than dive in to hundreds of pages of guidelines, I prefer to look at one at a time, when I have a deadline providing some urgency.

Does My Project Look Suitable?

After the deadline is

Funding Challenges for Game Arts

Contact the Officer/Getting Feedback

What Are the Funder's Goals?

Replace this text: somebody will write something nice about FUNDING here! How do you get the funding needed in order to produce an exhibit or event? Who are your possible allies? Which kind of partnerships could be useful? Is there a guideline to apply to funding? Could we create a funding network among international game curators?

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