Making art is one thing. Paying for it is another.
For Peterborough artists with a project rattling around in their heads — a record, a show, an installation, a performance, something strange nobody has quite figured out how to categorize yet — the Electric City Culture Council has once again put some actual money behind the idea.
EC3 has opened applications for its 2026 Grants for Individual Artists program, offering financial support to professional artists working in Peterborough and the surrounding county. Applications opened September 1 and close October 13, 2026 at 11:59 p.m.
Now in its fifth year, the City of Peterborough-supported program has already handed out more than $197,250 to 89 local artists, helping launch new projects while indirectly supporting dozens of other artists and organizations along the way. Grants are selected through peer-assessment juries rather than some mysterious bureaucrat with a clipboard deciding whether your guitar solo is culturally significant.
There are two streams this year. Component One offers development grants of up to $1,500, aimed at research, experimentation, project development and generally figuring out what the hell the thing is before you build it. A finished public presentation isn’t required.
Component Two goes considerably further, offering up to $3,500 toward the creation, production and presentation of new work or works in progress. Projects can come from virtually any artistic discipline and can happen in traditional venues, outdoors, online, through broadcasts, publications, banners, billboards or wherever else artists can convince the rest of us art belongs. Projects must take place in Peterborough city or county within the next two years.
And that flexibility matters. Artists are usually swimming in ideas and starving for resources. A few thousand dollars may not sound like record-label money, but at the grassroots level it can mean studio time, materials, musicians, rehearsal space, printing, production expenses — or simply enough breathing room to turn the sketch on the napkin into something people can actually see, hear or experience.
Applications are being accepted by email, with full program guidelines and application forms available through EC3. Applicants are encouraged to check their eligibility and determine which funding component best fits their project before applying.
The deadline is October 13.
So if you’ve been telling everyone, “I’ve got this project…” for the past six months, this might be the moment when the sentence finally gets a second half.