The Foundation will consider proposals from early midcareer authors, scholars, and choreographers working in any genre, style, and media that can be classified as Writing for Performance, with focus in playwriting, monologues, performance poetry, screenplay, and other writing intended for live or recorded performance.
Choreographic proposals designed for dance or other stage performance and notation are also eligible.
The Foundation will consider proposals from artists working in any genre, style, and media that can be classified as Choreography.
The fellowship is open to generative artists who conceive and create new original work in their early mid-careers in creating work, generally in their 5th–15th year of professional generative artistic practice and are clearly beyond their emerging stage.
All forms of composition and creation of new choreography are welcome. The fellowship does not support the work of choreographers that have solely performed, developed, or produced the work of others who are not also generative artists. It supports new work, created and developed by the artist from concept to completion: work that is not a remount, a revival, or an interpretation of previously existing material.
Collectives, companies, and groups are not eligible. You must apply as a solo artist or creator.
A dancer, producer, director, or other choreographic collaborator, etc., who is not also a professional choreographer, is not eligible.
Work samples must have been produced, presented, published, exhibited, screened or premiered by an independent organization or producer (not a self-presented work).
Choreographers with substantial recognition and lengthy careers will be considered ineligible.
Age and formal training in a degree program are not factors in determining eligibility.
Applications must be submitted by the choreographers themselves.
Note that the fellowship funds are intended mainly to support time for the development of artistic work; they do not underwrite publication, advertising, or promotional costs.
Howard Foundation Fellowships are awarded through a multi-stage review process that begins with successive rounds of screening by expert panels assembled for each year's fields. Proposals advance through the process based on the collective determination of panelists. To ensure candid assessment, the identities of reviewers are not public. The proposals that panelists collectively judge to be the strongest under the Foundation's award criteria are forwarded to the Foundation's multi-disciplinary Board of Administration, which makes the final selection.
The Howard Foundation is committed to supporting artists and scholars of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds and does not discriminate based on the gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or ability/disability of artists, and welcomes work whose content reflects the lived experiences of the applicants.