Calling all creative weirdos! If you have a strange, outside-the-box concept for a community art project, Joy Engine wants to see it.
The Milwaukee creative nonprofit, known for its annual ArtBlaze beach parties, is inviting local artists and community groups to submit their “unexpected, experimental and playful ideas” for the chance to receive up to $10,000 in grants through its annual JOY Grant program. The resulting artistic project must be freely accessible to the public and within Milwaukee city limits.
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In the artistic world, especially in public art, “there’s a lot of self-editing all the time,” said Joy Engine director Steph Salvia. “What if we take down those walls for a minute, and you could just do whatever you wanted to do, that would make you and other people happy?
“Just in general, there’s this hesitation when you say the word art – it doesn’t necessarily invoke something weirder, or funny, or anything like that,” she adds. “But given how divisive the world is right now, the more we can smile and laugh and get silly in spite of everything that’s going on, it just helps everybody.”
The program has up to $50,000 in total to award this year. Since 2022, Joy Engine has awarded $220,000 in grants to 29 art projects led by individuals or groups that make an effort to connect with their community or neighborhood. Previous winning projects include mosaic bollards by La Familia de Arte to creatively ease traffic in certain South Side corridors, and Natalie Derr’s documentary on Milwaukee’s Black cowboys, Forged by Steele, which was her first film and had a free premiere last March at the Oriental Theatre.
“We’re one of the few organizations that will fund an individual artist to do something – that’s whether or not you think of yourself as an artist,” Salvia said. “You don’t have to be associated with an arts organization or another business. You can legitimately be an artist in your mind. Maybe it’s a part-time, side thing that you do, but you consider yourself an artist. I think that does make us a lot different than some of the more formal organizations.”
In the search for stranger ideas, Joy Engine won’t accept murals unless they’re part of a larger community initiative. “We just want to see some weirder things and a different type of interaction than maybe a mural would do without community involvement,” Salvia says.
Applications are due Nov. 2, and applicants can expect to hear back before the end of the year. For more details about terms and eligibility, interested artists and groups can visit Joy Engine’s website.
