Center for Cultural Innovation
The Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) supports individuals in the arts—artists, culture bearers, and creative entrepreneurs—to realize greater self-determination so as to unfetter their productivity, free expression, and social impact.
CCI offers a variety of funding programs for individual artists, arts organizations, and small businesses in California and nationally:
- The Investing in Artists: Tools & Equipment program provides grants of $1,000 to $5,000 to individual craft artists, craftspeople, and folk and traditional artists in the U.S., including U.S. territories, to purchase tools, equipment, and materials that support their ability to make object-based work. Geographic eligibility will rotate over the 2024–2026 funding cycle with craftspeople in specific states and territories eligible each year.
- The Pa'lante Artist Grant provides up to $30,000 in unrestricted funding to artists and arts and cultural workers with deep ties to Sonoma County, CA.
- The Investing in Artists: Artistic Innovation program supports diverse working artists located in the Bay Area of California who are developing new work in the performing or media arts that pushes the envelope of their creative process, explores new artistic collaborations, and supports artistic growth and experimentation that extends the boundaries of their art-making. In 2024, applicants in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties are eligible. In 2025, artists residing in San Mateo, Santa Clara, or Santa Cruz counties will be eligible to apply. In 2026, artists residing in Marin, Napa, Solano, or Sonoma counties will be eligible.
- The Quick Grant Program provides up to $600 to California artists, creatives, cultural practitioners and cultural producers, and San Francisco/San Jose nonprofit arts administrators to participate in professional development activities that build administrative capacity, hone business skills, and strengthen the financial sustainability of the grantee’s practice, area of cultural production, or arts organization.
- The CALI Catalyst Program provides unrestricted grants of up to $7,500 to California changemakers who are creating tangible impact within the arts and culture sector, shifting power and influence to historically underrepresented voices, including Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities.
- Zoo Labs: FUND program empowers Black, Indigenous, and people of color to own and amplify their music businesses through entrepreneurial training, resource exchange, focused mentorship, and community building. Unrestricted grants support Bay Area BIPOC and BIPOC-led artist teams with a music business.
- The San José Creative Economy Fund provides project support to arts-based commercial businesses located in the city of San José, CA.
- The SCI Artist-Innovator Fund supports individual artist-entrepreneurs with spinal cord injuries in the U.S., including U.S. territories, who are inspired to innovate by the possibilities and benefits that are offered through the experience of pursuing a creative practice and living with spinal cord injury.
Application Procedures
Application guidelines are available on the CCI website.