The Crusade Engagement Grant awarded $10,000 annually in 2014, 2015, and 2016 to the applicant with the most innovative idea to build audiences for photography.

The Crusade Engagement Grant supports artists to create unique, approachable programs that bring new audiences to photography and allow them to engage with art in a meaningful way. The goal of this grant is to empower artists to focus on creating demand for art, and thereby encourage systemic changes to create a new crop of art lovers, patrons and collectors.

This $10,000 grant aims to generate and highlight innovations and to underwrite the execution of the best idea.

 Read about the 2016 winning project and other finalist ideas

All over the country, Community Supported Art programs (CSAs) are popping up as a creative way to connect artists with collectors. Inspired by agricultural share programs (also called CSAs – Community Supported Agriculture), where shares of a local farm are purchased in exchange for regular deliveries of produce, the art version also offers deliveries of bounty to shareholders.

For the Crusade CSA, fifty shares are made available to the public for $400 per share. Six totally amazing photographers are commissioned to create an image for shareholders in an edition of 50. Every other month, shareholders receive two original, signed photographs in the mail, totaling six images over the course of half a year.

Strengthening the photography community, supporting the careers of emerging artists, and cultivating collectors - that's what Crusade for Art is all about.

In our FOCAL POINT program, we survey the landscape of emerging photographers and select three talented, driven, and noteworthy artists to highlight each quarter. 

Take a look at their work and their words.
This will not be the last you see of them.

All FOCAL POINT photographers receive mentoring from Crusade for Art to think about their work, their target audience, and how to best engage them.

Local chapters create and implement programs and events that both create exposure opportunities for their artist members and cultivate new collectors within their communities.

While Crusade for Art provides resources and inspiration, the goal is to empower photographers to activate and begin implementing ideas and programs at a local level to create demand for their work.

Independent, volunteer Crusade for Art chapters around the country are the ground force of the movement.  The chapters are provided with the program guidelines, best practices, support, logo, and brand of Crusade for Art, as well as use local resources and creative talent to develop new programs.

Crusade for Art has local chapters in Brooklyn and Chicago.

Start With Art builds a culture of collecting by gifting original, signed photographs from local photographers to newborn babies through partnerships with community hospitals.

Launched in Pittsburgh by Matthew Conboy, this was the winning entry in our first Crusade Engagement Grant. Plans include multi-city expansion. To learn more about Start with Art: Pittsburgh, including press coverage, featured photographers and the Collectors' Gallery, click here.

LDOC is a free arts publication that features Chicago artists and writers and is distributed bi-monthly to commuters at Red Line stations. 

Joseph and Danielle Wilcox won the 2015 Crusade Engagement Grant with this amazing idea to share the work of  local artists in an installment-based newsprint publication.

The Trade of Art, Bruce McKaig’s Baltimore-based bartering concept and our 2016 grant winner, will connect photographers with tradespeople through a barter network that facilitates the direct exchange of art for goods and services. 

McKaig says, “My dual experience in the arts and in economics provides the foundation for this project. A barter network for photographers and labor in Baltimore would be a fantastic platform to lead the way to more equitable economic practices that result in more democratic access to the arts.”