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Program Guidelines
for 2011-2012 School Year
STARS Residencies provides grants of $500-$5,000 to schools to
support residencies of 3 days or more with teaching artists, scientists,
scholars, and cultural organizations working with the same group
of students. Residencies must take place during the school year.
Applicant Eligibility
Any Massachusetts school (public, charter, parochial, or independent) serving grades K-12 is eligible to apply.
Only one STARS Residencies grant will be awarded per school per
school year. Before beginning an application, check
the STARS Residencies funding list to see if your school has
already received a grant (or has an application already pending
review) during this school year.
School-based afterschool programs may receive a grant; however, the host school must submit the application on behalf of the afterschool program. The grant to the afterschool program will count as the school's one grant for the school year.
Schools that have failed to submit final reports for their STARS
Residencies grant are ineligible to apply in a future year.
Residency Eligibility
Residencies must involve a cultural partner – an artist, scientist, scholar, and/or cultural organization. If you want to work with more than one cultural partner (for example, two artists or a scientist and an artist) the cultural partners must collaborate on the same residency. This grant may not be used to fund more than one residency per school.
Each residency must involve the same group of
students working with the cultural partner(s) for a minimum of
one session on each of three days for a total of three sessions
minimum per student. A session is defined as 40-60 minutes contact
time with a group of students.
While MCC must set a cap on the grant amounts to enable us to provide
grants to more schools, there is no cap on the length of a residency
we will fund. We encourage you to design a residency that provides
as in-depth and meaningful a creative learning experience for your
students as possible.
Residencies may take place either at the school site and/or at the cultural partner's site (for example, at an artist's studio or a museum.) Residencies also can take place afterschool. Residencies may not take place during the summer – all residency activity must be completed by the end of the school year.
Cultural Partners
Choosing a cultural partner with the right experience and expertise for your learning objectives is the first step toward a successful residency experience. If you have not worked with the cultural partner before, be sure to ask for a resume and references from previous residencies.
Many schools find their cultural partners through recommendations
from colleagues in other schools. For a directory of cultural
partners in dance, literature, music, theater, film/video, humanities,
or science, please visit MatchBook.org.
(Our aim is to expand MatchBook.org to include visual teaching
artists. Until then, here are a few resources for finding
a visual teaching artist.)
You may work with any cultural partner you choose.
Application Deadline
There is a rolling deadline - applications are reviewed in the
order in which they are submitted, as long as funds last. Applications
are reviewed within four weeks of submission.
Grant Amount and Planning Funds
Grants range from $500-$5,000. The grant amount is calculated by multiplying the total number of sessions in the residency (one session is 40-60 minutes contact time with a group of students) times $100 per session up to a limit of $4,800.
In addition to the $100 per session, you will receive an automatic
$200 to pay the cultural partner(s) for planning time with the
school prior to and during the residency. Planning with the cultural
partner before and during the residency is critical to developing
a valuable, high-quality learning experience for your students.
The $200 planning funds may not be used to pay other expenses.
Review Criteria
Residencies that are less than 3 days for the same group of students
and/or have not been approved by the principal and the cultural
partner(s) will be ineligible. Applications will be reviewed based
on the appropriateness of the residency activities relative to
the learning objectives, and value for the students, school, and/or
community as explained in the application.
Culminating Activities
Culminating activities – such as an exhibit or performance of student work – provide an important opportunity for students to demonstrate their learning to other students, teachers, parents, and the community. Culminating activities also help demonstrate the value of creative learning to others in the school community.
Residencies of 5 days or more funded by this program must include a culminating activity. The culminating activity can count as the final day of the residency.
Eligible Expenditures
You may use grant funds to pay for the cultural partner's fee and other residency expenses, such as materials and the cost of a culminating activity.
Grant funds may not be used to replace line items in existing school budgets such as teacher salaries or space rental. Grant funds may not be used for capital expenditures. The state's definition of capital expenditures includes items with a life expectancy of more than three years and a monetary value of more than $500.
Final Report
If you receive a grant, you must complete the online Final Report and submit it to MCC within 30 days after the residency has ended. Schools that fail to submit a Final Report are not eligible to apply for another grant in a future school year until MCC has received the outstanding Final Report.
Notification
Within four weeks of submitting your application, you will be
notified via email about the status of your application. Be sure
that your email is set to accept messages from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council (diane.daily@art.state.ma.us).
Application Process
In just under one week, we have already received many more STARS residency applications than our budget will allow us to support in FY12. As a consequence, the STARS Residencies application is currently closed to further applications. If you have an application in progress we will be in touch with you via email.
We hope you will consider applying in future funding cycles. In the meantime, please help us assess the future demand for STARS Residencies funding by filling out this very short survey.
Incomplete applications will affect the outcome of an application.
Email and faxed materials are not acceptable.
- Review the program
FAQs.
- Confirm that your school has not
already received a STARS grant.
- Create
a user account and associate it with your school to access
the online application.
- Complete the online
application.
Contact Diane Daily or 617-727-3668 x262 with questions.
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| © Massachusetts Cultural Council 2012 |
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