Disciplines
NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships are awarded in 15 different disciplines over a three year period.
The following is a list of eligible discipline categories. Please see the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship main page to find out which disciplines are eligible in the next round of applications.
ARCHITECTURE/ENVIRONMENTAL STRUCTURES/DESIGN
This category includes environmental design; the making of places, spaces, constructions, and landscapes; traditional and experimental forms of architecture (built or unbuilt); functional art and design objects; and/or work made for hire. NYFA recognizes that architecture is typically a collaborative process, but applicants should only submit work for which they are able to demonstrate they played the primary design role.
CHOREOGRAPHY
This category accepts work in all choreographic styles, including mixed-media or multi-genre performance works in which choreography and/or organized movement is primary.
CRAFTS/SCULTPURE
This category accepts work in all forms of craft, including ceramics, glass, wood, metal, fiber, textiles, and mixed media. This category accepts work in all forms of sculpture, including kinetic works and installations.
DIGITAL/ELECTRONIC ARTS
This category accepts work in which technology is an essential element of the work’s creation, presentation, or understanding. Examples include: works created or displayed on computers or other electronic media; work created with computer models such as sculptural works; interactive installations including immersive virtual environments; internet projects; hypertext documents; other image, text, audio, or video works rooted in technology.
FICTION
This category accepts work in all varieties and genres of prose fiction, including novels, short stories, and experimental forms. Work in graphic or “comic book” fiction is also accepted in this category.
FOLK/TRADITIONAL ARTS
This category accepts works of traditional folk art and creative and cultural expressions. Folk/Traditional Arts is rooted in tradition and is connected to the cultural life of a community.
Work that is traditionally practiced within and among ethnic, regional, occupational, and religious groups as well as other kinds of communities with a common identity. Artistic forms can include: performing traditions in music, dance, and drama; traditional storytelling and other verbal arts; festivals; traditional crafts, visual arts, architecture, the adornment and transformation of the built environment, and other kinds of material folk culture.
This category does not include work involving choreography, theatricalization, or stylization that significantly alters traditions.
INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK
This category accepts submissions of work that integrate knowledge and methods from different disciplines within a single piece or body of work. This work may draw on traditions from the visual arts, especially those with a performative, political and/or social aspect.
Examples include, but are not limited to: participatory installations or environments, live art, social justice works and public art. Theater, dance, or visual art that employs traditional methods of exploration are not appropriate for this category.
You may not submit manuscripts. Live performances cannot be attended.
MUSIC/SOUND
This category accepts submissions from composers working in any and all styles of music including vocal and instrumental artists, soundscapes, and experimental forms.
NONFICTION LITERATURE
This category accepts work in all varieties and genres of nonfiction literary prose, including essays, criticism, journalism, autobiography, monographs, and experimental forms.
PAINTING
This category accepts work that involves painting of any kind upon any surface. However, artists who make engravings, etchings, lithographs, prints, serigraphs, woodcuts, and drawings should apply in the Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts category–not Painting.
PHOTOGRAPHY
This category accepts work in traditional and experimental photography or any work in which photography or photographic techniques are pivotal, if not exclusive.
PLAYWRITING/SCREENWRITING
This category accepts work in the writing of stageplays, screenplays, teleplays, libretti, radioplays, and audiodramas. While librettists may apply in this category, no audiotapes are accepted in this category. Composers of music theater works are advised to apply separately in the Music/Sound category.
POETRY
This category accepts original work in all forms of poetry, for either the page, the stage or lyrics for a music composition.
PRINTMAKING/DRAWING/BOOK ARTS
This category includes work in visual media other than painting, including artist’s books, aquatints, collages, engravings, etchings, lithographs, monotypes, prints, serigraphs, woodcuts, and drawings. Artists whose work involves painting only, including watercolorists, should apply to the Painting category in the next cycle. Artists whose work involves the computer as primary medium should apply in the Digital/Electronic Arts category.
VIDEO/FILM
This category accepts work in video or any work in which video or video techniques are pivotal, if not exclusive. This category also accepts work that has been initially shot with a film camera. Filmed material that has been transferred to the computer for editing and processing is acceptable.
This category does not accept work that is created for commercial purposes or “for hire.”
Image: Xenobia Bailey (Fellow in Crafts/Sculpture ’03)
