MAP Fund | How We Do It

Goals

MAP works to build a thriving, risk-welcoming contemporary performance field by providing project-specific funding to playwrights, choreographers, directors, composers and performers experimenting in any performance tradition or discipline.

MAP believes that exploration drives human progress, in art as in science and medicine. Sometimes the path of progress is lighted by an act of the imagination on the part of the artist. MAP exists to facilitate these acts and help bring them to their fullest realization.

Within that, MAP has sought especially to support work that brings insight to the issue of cultural difference or the concept of “other,” be that it class, gender, generation, ethnicity, or formal consideration. We believe that we learn as much from contrast as we do from likeness.

We hope MAP funding affords artists the deceptively rare freedom to go anywhere their imagination leads. Past grantees include some of the most groundbreaking artists of the last two generations, including playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks and Young Jean Lee, choreographers Bill T. Jones and Tere O'Connor, directors Reza Abdoh and Ibrahim Quarishi, and composers Steve Reich and DJ Spooky, among many others.

Strategy

MAP awards $1 million annually to up to 40 projects. The key features of the program are:

Maintain an open submission policy: MAP welcomes applications from artists and organizations across the US. By keeping the gates wide open, we hope to discover the freshest ideas and practices in the field, thus continuously seeding new growth, new potential.
Engage panelists and evaluators who are committed to the Fund's ideals of innovation and experimentation: MAP is adjudicated by artists and arts professionals who have demonstrated their own excellence of craft, leadership, and spirit of generosity to their peers. Their guiding role in MAP award selections cannot be overstated – it has allowed MAP to be nimble and responsive to movement in the field, establishing our credibility among applicants and thus encouraging artists to bring their best work forward.
Focus on the creative individual: The MAP application centers on the creative process and is designed to let the peer panel hear directly from artists. Core components are the artist's personally written statement of purpose, biography, and work samples.
Fund the artist's process, as early in the development of a work as possible: The MAP Fund's allowable costs are designed to emphasize the process as well as the product. They include residency costs, research and development expenses, workshop performances, and artist travel and commissioning fees.
Consider every applicant a potential grantee: MAP has developed an end-to-end outreach and assistance program for applicants that includes:
- In-person information sessions held by MAP in all regions of the country;
- Online chat sessions in the months before the deadline, answering specific questions from applicants anywhere in the world (chat sessions are then transcribed and posted on the MAP Fund website);
- A year-round, open-door policy for applicants seeking information about MAP or other funding opportunities;
- Feedback sessions offered to all declined applicants.
Be a national presence: MAP believes that an inclusive scope of dialogue is critical to the health of the field and is committed to welcoming applications from every state and region in the country.
Address the issue of grantee career sustainability: In addition to the monetary award, MAP grantees receive training in professional development and strategic planning skills free of cost from the Creative Capital Professional Development Program.

History

The Rockefeller Foundation established MAP in 1989. In 2001, Creative Capital began administering the program and in 2008, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation became MAP's primary funder in partnership with Rockefeller. Since 1989, the program has disbursed over 17 million dollars to 737 projects in playwriting, choreography, music composition, and ensemble, site-specific, and community-based performance. Projects have been undertaken in 34 states, and by conservative estimate have touched over two million audience members.

Initially, MAP's guidelines were fairly explicit in inviting works that dealt with ethnic identity or “intercultural representation,” as it was termed. Artists, however, quickly expressed the need for a more complex and nuanced understanding of “identity,” so MAP broadened its guidelines accordingly. MAP now thinks of diversity in the broadest possible sense, to include issues of class, gender, generation, and ethnicity. Further, MAP supports artists exploring the cultural and political implication of performance forms – for example text and movement derivation, audience-performance relationship, or performance environment.

This early shift turned out to be key to the program's success. It signaled to the field that the Fund intended to be led by the artists. It demonstrated an inherent appreciation of the creative individual in process, and, was in sync with the spirit of questioning that characterizes the work of many of today's artists.

The program is built to absorb the artists' intentions, rather than dictate them. As a result, after eighteen years and having supported two generations of artists, MAP remains as urgent and relevant today as the day it launched.

Evaluation

The MAP Fund has been the subject of two outside evaluations. In 1999, the research firm of Adams and Goldbard undertook a broad assessment of the needs of the performance field and the specific ways in which MAP had or had not met those needs. Their research involved interviews with MAP grantees, panelists, and administrative staff, as well as with field experts who had no formal relationship to the Fund. The report concluded: “MAP is widely perceived as having made great strides toward achieving its initial aims. [It has] taken risks in supporting emerging artists who were later recognized as major contributors to the culture.”

In 2007, Creative Capital commissioned Edward Martenson, professor of arts management at Yale School of Drama, to survey all lead artist and organization officials funded since 1989, and undertake one-to-one interviews with 25 selected grantee artists. The survey, sent out to approximately 500 individuals, elicited an astonishing 50 percent response rate. Martenson's report similarly concluded that MAP remains a critical resource in the field.

Supporters

The MAP Fund is generously supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 2003, MAP Fund supported Axis Dance Theater in the creation of a dance work by choreographer Victoria Marks set to a composition by Eve Beglarian. Photo by Andy Mogg. [more]