2024 BIPOC Artist Fund: Applicant Information Session

welcome everybody to the West Staff bip artist fund applicant information session um my name is Ana T I'll be on screen in a second and we'll do introductions and so on um we're going to open up to the next slide great and um Josh if you want to open up with our shared commitments that would be great sure hi everyone um I'm Josh I excuse me if I'm going to be looking up and down I have two screens stacked on top of each other so I'm going to be looking up but I realize that the screen is down he

re and so these are our shared commitments we value humility learning from our mistakes and asking questions to gain deeper understanding we feel empowered to hold one another accountable establish boundaries and ask each other for help we lean into discomfort by facing challenges and conflict with openness and Grace we stay present by listening actively being mindful of body language and participating to the fullest of our ability we share from our own experiences and grow as a team through the

inclusion of every individual voice we prioritize accessibility and are mindful of our language and ensuring belonging for all and so these are some of West staff's uh dedicated commitments that we reflect in our work over time consistently and we can move on to the next slide great Lena Lena would you like to do the zoom Norms please hello Lena or Marcelina RZ Zoom Norms please keep your microphone muted with not speak far left corner please rename yourself to your first and last name and your

state jurisdiction acronym click on participants hover over your name and click the more button to change to ask questions or make comments please use the raise hand function and or write your question in the chat at any time click on reactions in the middle of your screen and choose raised hand or click on chat in the middle of your screen to write your question or comment live transcripts or closed captions are turned on you can view or hide them change the size as well as other functions by

using the up arrow on the live transcript which is either in the middle of your screen or behind the more button with the three dots on the right side of your screen all right thank you so much Lena and we're gonna go through the session outline um you would a lot of you would have seen this but we have some specific goals for the evening and that's to make sure that you receive information to ensure that you are set up for success to complete an application for this program by the end of the se

ssion we want you to know important dates be familiar with our program guidelines how to access the application and the framework for the group coaching session that are a part of the program if selected so we're going to do some introductions of ourselves there are a lot of you um so we'll ask if you would introduce yourself in the chat if you would just share your name where you're zooming in from um please feel free to start that at any time the chat is yours um anything that you're excited a

bout this program ha a day um and so we'll be digging into those introductions now and then we'll give a brief overview of the program um and then we'll go through the guidelines and we decided to break up Q&A into two parts so we'll have some Q&A at that point and then we will take you through the using go smart which is the management tool that we use for all of our applications and so um we want to make sure that everyone is clear how to use it and then you may have had some more time to thin

k about um questions that you have so we'll open up again for questions we'll share the survey um and then we'll close all and we'll talk about next steps and then we'll close so moving swiftly to our introductions on the next slide next SL yeah great so as I introduced myself earlier I'm Anika T I'm the director of Grants Awards and programs at West Staff um and I will be the lead facilitator and a group coach for this program so if you are selected for the program you'll see a lot of me um I'm

going to say that I am zooming in from Northern Virginia um the land of the piscata way in naach Chun um I live in Arlington Virginia just out outside of Washington DC I've been with West Staff as the Director of this team almost three years April 5th will be three years um glad to see some familiar names and faces coming up in the zoom um my pronouns are she her um my artistic practice is uh Arts leadership and I am a singer so that's a little bit about me and I'm going to hand over to Josh to

share a little bit about who he is thanks Ana hello everyone good evening good morning um from wherever time it is and I am Josh Ellis he him I'm the Granton inclusion manager at West Staff I'm also zooming in from Arlington Virginia and I will be mostly helping to uh navigate you all onto the site as well as any other backend needs you all may have uh for the application here and my you mentioned artistic practice and you can my AR artistic practics um I'm a musician I play the UT trumbone and

I'll pass it over to Marcelina hi everyone Marcelina ramz you'll hear my team call me Lena um either is fine I am the coordinator here for Gap at West Staff super excited Josh and I are are a part of our Mighty team of five it's we're coming up on our Oney year anniversary with West staff and it's been great um I as the coordinator you'll be getting a lot of emails from me or just check-ins and just more of the backend admin um stuff with the team for that one so um if I can answer it you'll se

e me passing it along to Josh or NAA and uh I am an indigenous Latina um coming in from Colorado Springs Colorado and my artistic practice is I got my undergrad in musical theater I am a poet and a Latin dancer wonderful wonderful well I see um and we are three of uh four of five as Lena mentioned we on this particular program the three of us are um supporting this program and we have two other teammates again some of you may know them asan mck and Sierra Scott um so let's see the next slide all

right so as much as I said please feel free to put your questions in the chat and I see some people are even using the Q&A already um please you know the chat is yours if you see somebody you know say hey but also any questions you have as we go along and um we'll be you know sort of monitoring the chat so that when we get to the Q&A um you can ask we can um respond to those questions um and so on and in addition I just thought possibly some of you might want to ask some people may feel shy to

ask a question or just not sure if it's the greatest question there's no bad questions as far as we're concerned the only bad question is the the one that is not asked but given that some of you may want to answer your questions or ask your questions anonymously you see there is a QR code um on this screen and we will um in a few seconds we'll drop the link also in the chat so that you can um put any questions that results link isn't the right link so I have to get that in a second [Music] um ye

ah um so yeah so feel free to put your questions there you can you know right now if you're not on your cell phone you can put your um your cell phone open up your camera and grab that QR code there um I'm also going to in a few seconds put the link in the chat if you want to ask questions again anonymously um if you feel comfortable and you're ready you've got your questions ready um we know for example people have questions about supplemental materials and Sample work samples and stuff like th

at um we're definitely um ready to answer those questions but if you have other things we really um want to hear your questions especially for the good of everyone okay so just give me a few minutes to get that link to you but we'll keep it moving to the next slide okay so I'm gonna just give a really brief um background about this program um this is the bipo artist fund and um even though we all say program now and then um it really is a fund it is designed to fund black indigenous people of co

lor um who largely um do not receive um support and so um a couple of years ago West received a large uh donation from McKenzie Scott who is the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos who is the founder of Amazon some of you may know that she um McKenzie has given out a lot of money over the years and West staff was one of the recipients we received $8 million um sounds like a lot it's it goes quickly but we have um made specific efforts um particularly with issues of equity with supporting black and Indigenous

and other people of color um in their work and so this program is an outgrowth of that um if you have already looked at our Arts le. org website and if someone can drop that in the chat as well um you would know about our leaders of color um uh Network and so that program the emerging leaders of color program and the national leaders of color F fellowship program together have been going for like 14 years to uh total and so it was really you know through that program that we were able to think a

bout the needs of people of color artists of color um in this work and so we're super excited to be able to offer this program I have to note that this is our second year of this program and it was designed by alumni from those programs that I just mentioned they designed it and we didn't change we just you know put our Administration around it but they said it's really important that artists have access to money that doesn't have strings attached that doesn't make them fill out a lot of reports

that doesn't question them that doesn't say you have to get a project it doesn't say we're going to reimburse you if you talk to anyone who was in this program last year you know that once they uh re were awarded they received the check immediately so this is about trusting artists trusting people of color that you know what your needs are and we want to do what we can do to support them okay so that is a little bit about that and if you can just click on past program for me that is a link and

so when you go to our website you'll see you can just kind of quickly scroll through Lena so these are last year we had 18 um artists who were awarded um it's good for you to read their bios a little bit about them if you see any familiar faces you know reach out to them ask them about their experience I'm sure they would be more than willing um to share with you and we had there's the uh people who reviewed the applications we don't do a panel process so we hire people to review the application

s we don't feel like people need to discuss what you've said they just need to read what you've written um give comments and provide a score and so funding for this year's program um and Josh will talk more about the guidelines um is a total of $180,000 um we fully anticipate funding at least one artist uh per state in jurisdiction that are in the West Staff region so that's 16 that's 13 states and America Samoa American Samoa um the Commonwealth of the northern Mary Iana islands and uh Guam so

those 16 we want to make sure that there's at least one artist from each um including our states um that are represented and so we imagine that um that the average Awards will be between $6,000 and $12,000 last year the largest award was 15,000 and the and the smallest award was 6,600 I just want to mention quickly that um a difference from last year we had um a coach myself and Margie Reese um were the coaches for this program last year and it was really about bringing everyone together um to c

onnect and you know just share about not necessarily their artistic practice if they wanted to talk about that but looking at their personal and professional and artistic goals um and just having an accountability circle around that um this year we're going to take that to another uh Notch by using um some of the tools from artist Thrive if you can click there um Lena and you all will get this slide deck so you'll be able to look um but under that learn tab there's a wealth of free resources at

the top there under learn um and yeah so there's um resources for people who are working for artists and people who are artists and it's just some wonderful resources so if you've never used artist Thrive before um there's a host of things there and we're going to be pulling from some of those resources um to just help coach you through your work so I just wanted to share that um and network building is a huge part of it you're going to meet um if you are selected you'll meet artists from all ov

er um our region and what an opportunity to think about collaborating making friends and so on so that's my brief background of the program [Music] and I will hand it over to Josh now yeah thanks Ana so I'm going to talk about the general timeline of the bipo artist fund application process so as you can see applications opened on Monday March 11th and they will be open until Sunday March 31st at 11:59 PM mountain time after that we will have application reviewers as the mentioned from April 8th

through the 28th and then awarding notifications to happen in early May with us doing our regional announcements by May 15 and if we can go to the next slide we'll get into the uh program guidelines and uh application process one slide back perfect thank you and so in the chat I'm also going to add in the bipo artist fund program overview and guidelines page I'm s you all are familiar with that page but if you're not there is that link for that and the overview ANA gave a wonderful history and

overview of this and so um just wanted to give more information about like the the funds so funds will be distributed for from a pool of 180,000 and as she said Our intention is to distribute at least one award to each of the 16 States and jurisdictions and the westaf region and so eligibility applications are open to bipo artists cultural cultural practitioners uh regardless of immigration status those who work with or for the community those who are at least 18 years of age and those who are i

n good standing with West Staff uh with no overdue delinquent reports or documentation if you've worked with us before and so we're going to be investing in the well-being and safety of the bipo artists and the bipo artist fund support is available for but also not limited to salary or Income Support technology software uh materials or other resources and holistic health and the coaching sessions for uh awardees that are awarded for people who move through the process uh they will be required to

participate in group coaching sessions to provide uh support and that will be surprise excuse me that will be providing support to artists in their creative processes and strengthening their networks uh going back to what was mentioned about uh having artist Thrive resources and so those will be Monday monthly sessions and those can be found on the website as well as on the application to see if they meet the schedule and then we will have uh to give more information and transparency about the

scoring methods so on this uh website on Arts lead you'll also be able to see how the reviewers will uh do the scoring so they'll be using a 1 to 10 scale to assist in a selection process with the following questions guiding the application review the questions are does the candidate have a strong sense of how identity relates to their creative practice has the candidate articulated their specific needs can the candidate strongly Express their practice and how they plan to further develop it and

does the candidate have a strong and thoughtful connection to community and so again that's just to be very transparent and we welcome applicants to respond to those prompts to the best of their ability for that and I believe we'll be taking a pause here to just see if there are any questions about that information so far um any questions you might be finding from going to the link to the website yeah if uh Lena if you can check the the chat if there's any questions I think I saw a couple also

on the anonymous if y'all can look at that as well um and then we'll start to take questions if you want to ask it out loud you can use the raiseed hand function and we'll start to take those questions hi so I have a few that came in that I just want to say they were in the Q&A um but just as a reminder um we had someone ask about what is community's westa definition of community that was a very good one um it's not necessarily and uh West as definition of community we want to see what community

means to you what is your definition of community um and we had another one um that was asked earlier if Westaff uh we have to pay anybody back to West Staff you do not that money is yours um we'll be able to see both the reviewers comments and scores um you will Ana how are we feeling about that when that's a no correct so we will um we have a process for sharing scores it will be much later after the process I have to one thing we didn't mention um some of you may be applicant from last last

year we had 456 applicants last year and it's important for you to know that this is also something we didn't have an uh intro or info session last year and so we're doing that this year at folks requests as well um but we imagine that we're going to have a high volume again and so it it it will take us time to respond um we'll do our best um but you're going to need to get give us a lot of Grace Just because there's going to be so many um so many responses to look look at it will take a few mon

ths for sure yeah thank you Ana and then another question we have had asked a few times in the Q&A um this grant is an individual based artist Grant so organizations cannot apply for the grant this is individual based artist Grant only and then and if I can just also follow up with that I know a lot of you work in community or you you work with a collaborative the reality is we fund an individual artist and if you all you know if you have an arrangement with your Collective um on how the funds a

re going to be used um that's your discretion but in terms of on the application we're looking for an individual does that make sense I'll ask um mes you've had your hand raised for a minute let's transition there for a second yeah um so I'm with the Mexican cultural center and it's a nonprofit organization um so I'm not sure if we believe that we qualify we throw events highlighting um different artists from Mexico to Denver so I'm not sure if we still qualify yeah again an an organization um e

specially like yours it sounds like you know your focus is supporting artists that said I don't know if you are aware of our cultural sustainability initiative that's going to be funded by The Wallace foundation for arts or organizations of color um that will be coming out soon so I would recommend you stay tuned for that this is an individual yeah this is an individual artist program fund okay I appreciate it thank you thank you Crystal Kelly hi um I typed in my question but can you use the fun

ds for like marketing yourself um hiring an assistant to help you professional fees for like taxes like a tax repairer and accountant the things oh and what can it be used for the um the funds the funds cannot be used for anything that you do not want to use them for you got me yeah this is the real deal this is the Real Deal need is what we want to support and we wish we could do more all righty I have um excuse me if I'm saying this wrong uh Cassidy mahuka hi thank you so much I um had a simil

ar question for people that are elgible um I am an individual artist but I also have like a business license for the things that I do I we poon up Ron hats or other cultural uh things with relevant to our culture like um top of printing it's like kind of like a transferring over ink into um our traditional um usage but um yeah is it okay that I have a business license that would be like representing like my entity and then I will be funneling through just myself would I still be able to apply ye

s so we're not saying that you can't be a part of an organization or anything like that but the grant is for or the fund pardon me is for artists I wonder Lena if we can um sort of improv to but uh bring those guidelines on the screen just so I don't know if everybody has um been able to see all of this but I just want to point out um the questions that you're being asked um and I will pull up the guidelin yeah I'll pull up the guidelines um but I was going I'll put the next question while I'm f

inding those um how important is the media vi video audio image options in the grants some of us are live performers and have few access to videos of our best work really appreciate that um so your any supplemental materials or work samples are not going to be um a part of the scoring that said as you'll see in the language on the guidelines we we encourage you if you um if you can to provide you know to think about how you think uh some type of sample might help you I know that sounds super vag

ue um and let me also say this to that does that help my question that was my question yes ma'am I'm I'm a native Hawaiian Storyteller and most of my work is done live um I'm actually asking for this grant in order to improve my online work to go through Zoom or Google meet I I I recently met with um the Honor Society from colleges across the Pacific region on Zoom but I don't have uh access to those um uh videos and I I have a few things that I did on an early during the covid video meeting but

the quality was so poor because I don't have the appropriate um bandwidth and so forth and so on so I I'm worried about uh providing some kind of media if it was necessary how important it was so that was my question sorry okay and I know worries and I appreciate that and being concerned about and these are the very things that we don't want to be a worry you know and why we make these things optional and why it's not included in the scoring and we are you know um we speak to the application re

viewers about that like whatever is there on the application is there for you to look at but your scoring is based on the questions and how they respond to those questions and then after and we should say this as well um just to hopefully put folks a little bit at ease we um we also after the applications are reviewed and we have the scores and we have the comments we go through the applications again because we have to again make sure that every state in jurisdiction is represented um that scor

e is not the most important thing representation is very important to us so that is one thing and then um we're also looking for diversity of identity there is a question on your um on the application that is about your identity and how um you know that intersects with your work your community and so on and so we are also looking to and we ask particular questions about um gender identity racial ethnic identity we need again to make sure that we have representation so you know those things are v

ery important to us that we are able to be representative and um we also recognize that the written word is not everyone's strength and so we want to make sure that if your artistic practice or some picture that you want to um send or upload or you know a testimonial from someone you know the the sky is the limit if you feel like you are not the best um representative or AB your ability to speak about yourself um you don't feel as confident in that and you maybe feel your work speaks for your fo

r itself then feel free you know we because that's where it can work for you that's when we're trying to promote equity in that um maybe the reviewer felt like oh I'm not really getting a lot out of these questions or or their responses but then they're able to look at the work and say oh this is this is really representing them so you know yourself you know your artistic practice um you know your strengths and we want you be a to be able to play to them if if you if I can use that expension ex

um expect that expression sorry sorry all right Ana and for the sake of time we're going to just answer three more questions and then move on and then Josh and I will watch the Q&A thank you um all the next question that we have here is is this taxable income um [Music] we I've got to come back to that question because I don't want to answer it wrong and I don't have a finance person here we do collect W9 um you know it is under the category of a grant in terms of our program so I just need a do

uble check with our finance person I don't know that I can get our finance director I don't know that I can get her and I just can't recall from last year so um we will definitely provide a response to that question um we'll make sure that we respond to that question um in the guidelines so that you'll be able to see it on the website um and in our follow-up email um where we provide you with the uh slide deck and the recording for the session so thank you for that question I just I'm not a fina

nce person I don't want to get it wrong all righty next question and then I will answer um to Rene wolf you have your hand yes hello um with your supplemental materials can they cross genres so if there is um music as well as painting or writing can that be used as part of your supplemental or does it have to stay within one category definitely doesn't have to stay in one category when you're asked about your uh when you when you uh set up your profile you're you're going to be asked about your

artistic practice you can choose multi-disciplinary that is not a that's not a barrier of access to this uh fund excellent thank you so very much thank you um and I did accidentally um answer I tried to type in the answer but then it answer live um for a voice recording you allowed to submit a video of you answering the question so there that is an accessibility need that we are hoping to fulfill with that one um excuse me if I'm saying this name wrong and this is our last two questions I'm goin

g to do Yaya and then Amani and then we're going to Mo on did I say your name wrong I'm so sorry uh y ya a ya a they it was Yaya I'm so sorry I was reading question okay um gracias so um the scoring rubric is that I see the methods is that the that's what they are reviewing us or reviewing the writers uh by uh those are the questions they're going to be answering and um if so thank you I can I can go look that up it's it's hard for me to see that small here but um I'll know where to go and then

the other is uh for folks who may may decide not to apply because of the one representative per uh State um you know as as we all know California is kind of large and um I don't know if you'd only choose one from California or one from every region um and last but not least if we decide not to apply um are you still taking in information for those uh who'd like to be readers instead reviewers and where could one go for that thank you for all these thank you for those questions and if I miss anyt

hing um you know please just let me know um so backwards um we have already selected application reviewers um for this program and those um names are going to be listed uh um during this process so that everyone knows you know who's who's doing that work um so but yes in future um you know if there's interest in that we did we did somewhat of a wide call um we didn't you know broadcast through our whole um West Staff Community um but there there are opportunities for that and other um paneling o

r application reviewing opportunities as they come along um and yes and those are compensated and um in terms of I I grew up in California I feel you um and last year if you look at the awardees from last year we had a couple from we had 18 and um we had a couple of states and jurisdictions that where we had a couple of jurisdictions that weren't um represented um so we had I think we had two from New Mexico I'm just going off the top of my head um and I can't remember uh we did I think have one

from California but all those things are a possibility that's why I say at least one we want to make sure that there's at least one if we can you know we just have to look at what comes in so we can't uh really make any commitments beyond that at least one um was there one more question that I missed it was around the scoring rubric um I think Josh is that not on the FAQ it is on the FAQ okay yeah and did you have a specific question about it or were you wed to okay having point out thank you o

kay yeah then Alman is our last question thanks thanks Lena uh and Ana you had mentioned earlier a cultural Grant in collaboration with the Wallace Foundation that may be upcoming or is upcoming I just want to know if you could repeat the name for me because I think for sure we might have an artist we could have a individually apply but we're a large organization with a lot of artists so I'm also interested in other opportunities okay can you email me absolutely yep ana. westa.org yep and you're

going to get my okay thank you yeah we go ahead and good so go to move on perfect Al righty thank you all for um that productive Q&A session and apologies if we didn't get to all of your questions um Lena if you can still please answer any questions in the chat and if we don't get to it because I see we have 13 minutes left and we still have a couple of more slides if we don't get to it please uh email grants westa.org that Lena has dropped in the chat and we'll be sure to answer you on there a

nd so for this um so we're going to move on to accessing the application this QR code here is uh to lead you to creating an account with ghost smart if you have not done so before or if you need a refresher if you have done so on another different G smart platform I'll get more into that but just saying for this portion um I'm more just going to walk you through how to get to the application what to look for do a trial one uh as if you've already logged in so again please use the ghost smart res

ources and if you're still having trouble please reach out and I'm actually going to share my screen now thank you and me widen that so you all can see and so this is the application portal if you look at the header you'll see new user account information and uh frequently asked questions so closing that down and looking down if you click the bipo artist fund title then that will lead you to this page that's this is our bipo artist fun page which we were just giving a lot of information from and

once you've read through this page and you're ready to apply click apply today and it's going to lead you right back to this page and so if you click apply to apply you're going to click here or if you're Savvy and no go smart uh it will say click here up here but shows that I'm already logged in um so to apply you will click here and it will take you to this login page and here is where you'll type in your login and upon doing that you'll come to this page and this is just going to give you a

snapshot of what we just shared and here is where you would start the application if you've never started it it will say start here but I've opened it so it says edit and then if you look to the right it will have the application PDF here and this is will be an overview of the application so even before you start the application you can click that PDF View and you can see the application narrative questions The Prompt questions um here is the optional sub optional supplemental materials and that

just gives you an over rview of uh the application even before you enter it and so just to I know speed through this and apologies that we're running out of time here but this is uh what the application looks like and uh please read through these instructions as they give uh information on character limits uh video time limits as well and also uh this in red uh remember to save your work because the system does not automatically save and so to save your work you just scroll down here and you cl

ick save work and there will be if you don't answer something that's required and you save your work then it will let you know that there's missing highlighted fields in red and so I'm just going to put that back so that we can move on and so again uh here are the uh optional supplemental materials that we were just talking about that again we've added this portion as we understand that people may be better able to share things visually or want to share something that may supplement their applic

ation this is not required and we just encourage applicants to consider if you think submitting optional materials will affect your application and again we're not looking for anything in particular and there is not a built out separate criteria for if you have supplemental materials or not so it's very optional and so going from this page again remember to save work stay in jurisdiction then it just asks uh demographic questions and some questions to just confirm eligibility some eligibility re

quirements and then when you're ready to submit it's going to ask you this prompt uh upon submitting upon submitting no changes can be made so please confirm the information you've submitted uh view the PDF function again to get a wide view of the application before you start and afterwards to see if everything looks correct and when you're sure ready to submit um and when you're sure then you can submit if you're still working in application you can save and keep working and then it'll say up h

ere that you're all set and you can back out or you can log in and it will come back to this page and say in progress um sorry again for just speed running through that but I just wanted to give a overview of just how you get to the application and hopefully that clears things up was just accessing that and I will stop sharing my screen [Music] for that and so we're coming to our last six minutes I'm not sure ni if we wanted to answer one or two more questions or we had some closing thoughts yea

h I'm willing to stay on for like another 20 minutes or so um so and obviously y'all if you um if you need to go you should go and um just make sure that I'm the host um and then so if you want if you can just share um the last slide I think we're ready for that yeah so and if you can just share the feedback survey in the chat you might not be satisfied right now because you might still have more questions but that's why I'm GNA stay on longer and ask ask your qu answer your questions but we hav

e a little feedback survey we want to know what you think if you need more information um you know if this was helpful we want to you know be able to continuously improve so um if we can put that link in the chat and we'll also email it to you and then um we're gonna send the slide deck to you we're going to send this recording of this session to you um tomorrow sometime not tonight um and it's we're on the East Coast some of us so um and then if you've got more questions um please feel free to

email us um the best bet is to email grants westa.org so that we make sure that we get um your questions and they don't get lost in our individual emails um yeah and you know make sure you get that application in that you push the submit button before March 31st it's due March 31st at 11 P 11:59 p.m am I right on the time yes Mountain 11:5 11:59 p.m. mountain time so important because our system is on mountain time it's going to close at that time we won't be able to open it back up um so let's

go back to some questions um I am driving so I can't read the questions in the chat so uh Lena and Josh if you're Le leaving I'm just going to need people to unmute themselves and ask questions no I can stick around for a little bit longer and help facilitate sorry I was on mute sorry Josh I was on mute when I answered that I'm also staying on so it's totally fine okay okay cool go back and forth what do we yeah do we have some questions in the chat or anywhere we do we had a few pop up and this

one this question I'm about to read has been answer asked a few times are those four dates mentioned in there in there are those M atory what happens if we can't make one of those dates they are mandatory and um we in the application or in the process of selection we're asking you to confirm that you can participate if you can't participate then we um would rather have someone else who can fully participate and not trying to be Shady but it's just really really important to the process and to y

our colleagues that you're able to fully participate and I get that there could be conflicts because you're just you know seeing these dates now in your life can we edit our applications after we submitted um if you let us know that something came up or you inserted something wrong um Josh and I will open those back up for you if it's an emergency or um but the if you have submitted and you hit the deadline of March 31st we will not be opening that back up for you all righty Kevin Wong I see you

have your hand raised and you have a couple questions in the chat would you like to just answer ask those live or from me read them from the chat you are mute so sorry hello yeah there you go um yeah so uh I had two questions uh sort of related the first one was if you were if you have a specific project that you were thinking about working on um during the grant period where would be the best place to talk about that would that be in question one or should would it be good to upload some sort

of like proposal or project plan in your supplemental materials and then sort of follow on to that is is there a either a page limit or a or a time limit to the supplemental materials whether that's written or like a video that you're submitting I don't think that we've included a page limit I I do believe there's a a video time limit of like five minutes or something like that um and Josh you know correct me if I'm wrong um what I do want to say is like as much as you are focused on um a projec

t that you're working on and that is fantastic and a and awesome that is not something that we're we're requiring from you that is not something that um we are that is a focus and um I'll just give some examples some people have asked for um funds because they just need a break they just need to go on a retreat because they're overwhelmed with life some people have um said that they're going to use the funds um you know just to uh take a course to get a wheelchair to you know because the life in

sur I mean the health insurance is a is a travesty in this country and they can't get a wheelchair so you know things are really open and what we're looking for in the answers to the question is your ability to clearly succinctly clearly and concisely articulate how your identity feeds into your practice how your community feeds into we are really looking for um you know artists who are centered in community and that that is a real important part of your process now when it comes time to the gro

up coaching and sharing with each other in the sessions if you're selected like you know some people do share about their projects and you know um or meet with each other um to talk about their work um but in terms of what we're expecting from you for a proposal I just want to like relieve you of that burden of being Project based because that's not what this is thank you for that and I just wanted to um reiterate that yes this fund focus is more on the artist than the project and craft and so o

nce you see those narrative questions and see how they're structured and worded then it will click a little bit more and um if you do wish to include uh that project U Kevin if you do wish to include that um in the supplemental materials uh that probably be where you want to submit that or if it's relevant to your answers that you'll put in the narrative questions uh for it to be mentioned there and then also on the limits so for this year for the supplemental material specifically there is no l

imit for this year's round but again as Ana said and please keep in mind that the application reviewers will probably be reviewing hundreds of applications and so it may be best to air on the side of conciseness to deliver your message and what I'm trying to sorry what I want to just you know say again thanks Josh is your answers to the questions that are provided are the most important and however you however you portray those through video through a drawing through a written word through sound

that those are the most important questions because that's what the applicant the reviewers are going to be reviewing our next question we have from Zahir Lauren hey thank you um you actually just answered it in the questions and the question was if for some reason the links don't work in our videos will the reviewers let us know and you let me know that they would let us know if our links don't work so I appreciate that but do your level best to check everything definitely I'm sitting here nex

t to my daughter who's SM smiling because I won't read her essays if there's a typo no no no no spell check do your things check your links yes indeed thank you and then we have um Nyla I just um wanted to know whether the mandatory meetings that are scheduled if you get the grant are scheduled well in advance so we can plan to put it in our Calender and hold those dates open I mean so the dates sched of those meetings yeah go ahead Josh so the AY support sessions those dates and those times are

already established uh they're they're on the website but there will be occurring starting in June through September and so I can copy and paste those now and again those are on the program guidelines and uh so feel free to cross check that with your schedule even now and then I had some difficulties with this particular meeting here in that I got two different one from Josh and one from the West Staff whatever with two different times uh one with was for 12:00 and one was for 1:00 this is Hawa

ii Standard time so I don't know why I got two different times I don't know if it was Daylight savings we don't have I think yeah that's probably what happened yeah so I loged on at w o00 and then noticed that it said no 1:00 and so I I wanted to make sure that I can not waste an hour for meetings because we don't have daylight savings time in Hawaii so thank you I will look on the website for the um dates mandatory dates and put it on my calendar thank you thank you perfect and then Alma pz hi

everyone I also received the same thing as Nyla um so I just hopped onto the meeting at 501 um but I did review the uh chat that we will be receiving this um and I just want to say thank you for having this information session so and I just wanted to flag that as well I'm so sorry we're sorry Hawaii and Arizona in particular because we you know we set things up before daylight savings and then now it's after and I know I've had some meetings that have been messed up because of that fortunately s

o our apologies and please feel free to if you've got other time um you know happy to spend some um other time with you um and and you know you'll have this recording but please feel free to reach out to us all of the sessions are January I'm sorry June July August September so fortunately none of those are in any time time change so we won't be making that error again all righty and then uh we're going to take one more question so if you have any more um please email us your question I will put

the email back in the chat just chre um but Leonard leam is our last question of the day thank you um so my question is more on timeline because as for Guam and the cnmi the Commonwealth of the northern Marina Islands we are 10 hours ahead of UTC right Universal Standard Time um or plus 10 hours is it safe to assume that most meetings after this we'll be around this time um can you all just look at the the coaching sessions I think we put all time zones on there I when I say y'all I'm not I don

't mean you Leonard I'm asking Lena or Josh just so that we can share that um you only until March 31st all the other dates after that have not time on the website yes um on the uh B artist uh fun program website okay so that's where this question's coming from but those times are on the program guidelines I'm checking right now [Music] yes they are so if you go to timeline I mean um if you go to awarde support sessions it'll have the list of days so let me go ahead and share my screen so just o

ne more moment so if you see here under awarde support session so I'm going to go ahead and just take these off really quick you can see you'll go to the website oh Lina actually we're not seeing the right page here we're seeing your email can you see that now there we go thanks okay um so you go to optional uh award support sessions here all arst here and then due to this wide range of time zones it's going to be all here so Sim and standard time minus 5 hours 1 p.m. on a Monday fly time minus

4 hours 2m and so on and so forth and that is all found here on the bipo artist fund program website and that link is in the chat um and as well as will be it's in the link that you used to sign up and we can send it as well if you email us at gra does that make sense Leonard okay thank you wonderful and if anybody doesn't have any last questions um thank you so much Ena Josh would you like to close us out Josh over to you oh thank you well again everyone thank you for sticking around and asking

your questions and um again this was our first applicant information session for the bipo artist fund and so we're always happy to improve and learn uh and so you can please provide your comments and questions in that feedback form that we've attached and uh again if you have any other questions please reach out to Grants westa.org and happy artist fun application writing thank you everyone good night