Rocket Grants are a funding opportunity for artists who live within an 80-mile radius of downtown Kansas City.

Rocket Grants specifically encourage work that is inventive and “under the radar”, and that engages or benefits an audience outside of established arts venues, museums, theaters, art galleries or arts districts.

The long-term goals of the program are to:

  • encourage emerging and non-traditional art practices in the Kansas City region
  • contribute to a thriving artists’ community &
  • build bridges between geographic and cultural communities

Awarded projects are therefore evaluated not only on the artistic merits of the proposed projects, but also on their capacity to stimulate further growth.

Proposals should contribute to a diverse and supportive art ecology characterized by unconventional and expansive forms of interaction, exchange, provocation, and surprise.

Rocket Grants enable artists to take new risks with their work, push the scope and scale of their activities, develop and pursue collaborative projects, and/or engage with the public and public realm in inventive and meaningful ways.

Both individual artists and groups of artists can apply for project-based Rocket Grants of up to $6,000. Non-profit organizations are not eligible for this program.

2018 Borded Carnosos | Border Carnage, a traveling exhibit by Israel Alejandro Garcia Garcia documenting the immigrant experience, including archival histories from three KC Latinx neighborhoods which have inevitable, painful ties to the borderlands of today.
2017 Rocket Grant Recipient Altar: Art Space, a collaborative, multidisciplinary artist-run space that sought to connect a variety of creative disciplines through interactive, immersive environments and unexpected programming
2018 Rocket Grant Recipient AY Young performing at The Battery Tour, a renewable-energy powered grass-roots concert series that raises money through donations to purchase portable, solar powered boxes for villages that do not have reliable access to electricity.

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