The New York Office Of Media And Entertainment (MOME) is offering $500,000 in grants to female-identified musicians and industry professionals.
MOME commissioner Anne del Castillo announced the creation of the new fund this week, which will be administered via the New York Foundation For The Arts.
New York Office Of Media And Entertainment (MOME) is tackling gender imbalance in the music industry, offering $500,000 in grants to women in music.
The grants are part of The NYC Women’s Fund For Media, Music and Theatre Initiative, a project which in 2019 has awarded $1.5 million for various film, theatre and digital media projects by women, $500,000 of which will be devoted to women in music.
The grants are not only for musicians but for women involved in every step of the recording process, from sound engineers to producers. “We didn’t want it just to be about female musical acts,” says MOME’s senior executive director Shira Gans. “We wanted to make sure we were really promoting projects that had a female credit for writers, engineers and producers.”
The grants from MOME are for music projects specificially, and up to $20,000 will be awarded providing that 75% of the recording and studio time is in the city, or 75% of the project budget costs are spent locally. The mayor’s office explains that “the fund will provide up to $20,000 to support the production of a new EP, album or music video(s) for yet-to-be-released work where the principal place of recording or production is New York City.”
All genres will be considered, though the applications will be separated into two categories, one for “classical, experimental, new music and jazz,” and one for all other genres. Applicants cannot be represented by a recording label and must reside within the five boroughs of New York City. You can read up on more info here.
