You are an artist. Against the odds, you have been selected to receive the Morrow Street Arts Fund’s $5,000 Project Award. The email contains an animated burst of confetti. Your electricity company has never sent confetti, even when you paid on time.
Your project is a set of forty-eight ceramic copies of the front-door keys belonging to tenants of the Elm Court apartments, which will soon be demolished. You will suspend the keys at eye level and record a short memory beside each one. The tenants like the idea. One woman has already brought you a key with the words DON’T LOSE THIS written on a piece of masking tape.
The grant covers clay, firing, exhibition space, accessibility, installation and a modest artist fee. It is the first time anyone has described your labor as a fee instead of a calling.
Then you read the payment terms. The money will arrive after the exhibition, on submission of itemized receipts and an approved final report. Expenses incurred before the official agreement is countersigned may not qualify. Your bank balance is $214.82. Your available credit is $83. The ceramic studio wants a deposit by Friday.
The portal asks you to confirm that adequate resources are in place to deliver the project. You have four days to make adequate resources materialize.
Choose how to accept your prize. Open any choice to see what happens. You may try every route; the fund will count each attempt as community engagement.
1. Borrow against the award.
At the bank you explain that the arts fund has promised you $5,000, and you need $5,000 until the arts fund gives it to you.
The loan officer asks whether the funds are guaranteed. You show her the award letter, which says Congratulations in nineteen-point type and subject to satisfactory performance and available appropriations in eight-point type. She asks whether you have collateral.
You have a secondhand camera, eighty pounds of clay and a stack of rejected exhibition proposals. The camera is worth $60. The clay is worth $90 if no one asks you to move it. The proposals are priceless, although the bank uses a different word.
The officer is sympathetic. Her cousin makes jewelry and currently works at an airport car-rental desk. She offers a personal loan with a service fee, interest and payments beginning before the grant-funded event. The APR has two digits, neither of them small.
You ask whether interest can be included in the budget. The handbook says financing costs are ineligible. It also says applicants are encouraged to demonstrate financial sustainability.
Accept the loan.
For eight weeks you become a bank that happens to make ceramic keys. At night you fire the pieces; by day you make minimum payments. The exhibition opens beautifully. Tenants speak about hallway smells, broken elevators and a neighbor who watched everybody’s children from her kitchen window. Reviewers praise your ability to connect personal memory and public space.
The fund reimburses $4,310. It has disallowed interest, card fees and an insurance deposit, plus $90 because one receipt was photographed rather than scanned. Your project wins a commendation for resourcefulness. Your bank wins more.
Decline the loan.
The officer wishes you luck with your art. You return home and receive a reminder that your financial capacity statement is overdue. You type: I lack the financial capacity to fund the project, which is the reason I applied for funding.
The portal flags your answer for negativity and recommends the applicant toolkit, a 64-page PDF titled Building a Culture of Yes.
2. Ask your family for the missing $5,000.
Your mother answers on the second ring. Before you can explain, she asks whether the grant means you finally have a job. You say it means somebody believes your work has value. She says that sounds like a job.
She offers $600 from the envelope marked water heater. You try to refuse. She says the water heater has been making a noise for three years and is probably just being dramatic. Then she asks why the people giving you money need you to bring your own.
You send the fund a revised budget with $600 in family support and $4,400 in anticipated contributions from local businesses. The ceramic studio owner offers a discounted firing rate if you mop the floor on Sundays. A print shop offers ten free programs, provided its logo appears above the tenants’ names. You begin calculating the cash value of a mop.
At 11:43 p.m. the portal warns that contributions must be documented with dated letters on organizational letterhead. Your mother has stationery from a funeral home where she worked in 1998. You consider it. She calls back to ask if you have eaten.
Submit your mother’s contribution.
The fund asks for her tax identification number and a description of her organization’s mission. You say her mission is getting the water heater replaced. The reviewer replies that domestic maintenance is beyond the scope of the program, though the panel appreciates your commitment to creative partnerships.
Give the money back.
She tells you to keep it until you are sure. You buy her a new water heater with the next check from your weekend job. The fund sends a survey asking how the award improved your household’s economic security. There is no answer for It introduced my mother to fiscal sponsorship.
3. Make the exhibition without waiting for the money.
You ask the tenants for their keys. Some bring the originals; some cannot find them and draw the shapes from memory. One man brings a bent key to a building that no longer exists. A teenager brings three plastic key tags because his family has moved three times since March.
You cannot afford forty-eight ceramic casts. Instead, you trace the keys in pencil on cheap paper, cut them out, and hang them from fishing line inside an unused storefront the barber lets you borrow. A woman brings folding chairs. The laundromat next door lends an extension cord. Someone prints the tenants’ words at work after hours.
More than a hundred people attend. A former tenant stands under a paper key and reads a memory of her father trying every lock on the street after he forgot which building he lived in. For a minute nobody moves. You did not budget for the minute, and it is the best thing you have made.
You send the fund photographs. The project officer congratulates you on exceeding your attendance target, then explains that a change from ceramics to paper requires prior written authorization. Reimbursement cannot be approved until the budget variance request is reviewed. The ceramic studio deposit, which you never paid, is still listed as a committed expense. You are asked to provide proof it was not incurred.
You submit a photograph of your empty wallet. The fund explains that the photograph does not meet its documentation standards.
4. Withdraw and preserve eligibility for future opportunities.
The withdrawal form asks why. You select Financial barriers. A second box asks which grant-funded resources would have enabled you to overcome them. You type The grant.
The fund sends a gracious note saying your decision will not affect your standing in future competitions. It invites you to a free webinar on artist entrepreneurship. The webinar takes place during your paid shift.
Six months later you receive the annual report. The cover shows your smiling face, taken at the awards reception you attended before reading the contract. Beneath it is the sentence We invest in artists at every stage of their journey. You were photographed holding a paper cup of sparkling water. The cup has been cropped out.
End of game. The fund would appreciate your feedback. You may take as long as you need, provided it is completed by 5 p.m. on Friday. Please quantify the new opportunities created by your participation.
