$650,000 In Grants Available To Black Artists, Designers, and Small Businesses

Instagram is teaming up with the Brooklyn Museum to debut the 2022 #BlackVisionaries Program to provide $650,000 in grants to Black artists, designers, and small businesses.

This year’s round calls for 10 creators to obtain essential funding. That includes five Visionary Small Business Grants of $100,000 for Black designers. Five Emerging Visionary Grants of $30,000—with the backing of Meta Open Arts—will be for people centered on arts and design based in the United States.

According to a news release, “it’s an effort to empower, center and invest in aspiring Black voices within art and design.” Yet, those seeking the funding need to act soon. Grant applications have already opened and are due online before July 29. To be eligible, you must be between 18 and 35. Small businesses or arts organizations must be younger than 10 years old.

Antwaun Sargent, writer, curator, and creative chair of the #BlackVisionaries initiative stated, “Most folks who don’t have traditional pathways into spaces like the arts and design just need opportunity. A grant like this could mean a world of opportunity.”

The funding could prove beneficial. For instance, minority firms often lack capital and other resources to start or scale up. Data shows Black entrepreneurs gained only 1.2% of a “record $137 billion” invested in U.S. startups in the first half of 2021.

Instagram and the Brooklyn Museum will award mentorship to each grant recipient with Mobile Makers, a nonprofit offering youth design and skill-building workshops in Chicago and Boston communities. Those awarded grants will be chosen by a committee of artists and designers led by Sargent.

Sargent, too, is part of a committee of artists and designers who will select grant recipients, according to World News Era. It noted the committee will include Elle Decor Editor-in-Chief Asad Syrkett, Academy Award-winning costume designer Ruth Carter, and Instagram’s Head of Design Ian Spalter.

It was reported the #BlackVisionaries grant program is now in its third year. It furnished grants last year to five Black designers and Black-led small businesses, worth $205,000.

Meta counts Instagram and Facebook among its holdings.