Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) for Artists

Overview

The Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) for Artists is a regrant program administered by Wave Farm in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). The program provides grants of up to $7,500 to individual New York State artists for the completion and/or public presentation of new work in all genres of sound and moving image art, including emergent technology.

Wave Farm is a media arts center based in Acra, New York (Upper Hudson Valley) that operates interdisciplinary outdoor installations, residencies, fellowships, a research library, FM radio station WGXC, and online radio channels. The MAAF is part of Wave Farm's broader arts service infrastructure, which also includes fiscal sponsorship and consultation for artists.

For the 2026 cycle, 15 grantees were selected from a pool of 233 applications through a competitive panel process. NYSCA will award over $161 million in FY 2026 across all 10 state regions, with MAAF being one component of that statewide arts funding.

If you are a New York State-based media artist with a project in its final stages or ready for public presentation, review the MAAF for Artists page for full eligibility details and application instructions.

What It Funds

MAAF for Artists supports two types of activity, and applicants can apply for one or both:

Completion Support: Funding for artists in the final stages of completing new work across all genres of sound and moving image art, including emergent technology forms. The proposed project must be at least 75% complete at the time of application and ready for completion within the calendar year. Eligible costs include final editing, color correction, sound finishing, mastering, accessibility features, and preparation of materials needed for distribution and exhibition. Applicants must demonstrate how the completion grant will lead to future distribution or exhibition of the finished work.

Public Presentation Support: Funding for artists to distribute or exhibit completed work. This track covers the costs of getting a finished film or media work in front of audiences: festival submission fees, shipping and handling for physical materials, digital delivery costs, venue presentation expenses, and community screening costs. For public presentation support, the project must have been completed in 2025 or will be completed in 2026.

Both tracks address the gap between a work's creative completion and its public life: the finishing and distribution phases that standard production grants rarely cover.

What MAAF Does Not Fund

MAAF has specific exclusions that filmmakers should note before applying:

• Feature-length narrative documentary: For FY2026, MAAF cannot support non-fiction, feature-length, team-driven narrative documentary works. The program directs applicants to the Independent Documentary Association's Grants Directory for Nonfiction Film for those projects. Individual artist-made experimental documentary works remain eligible.
• Music projects: Including electronic music. Sound art is eligible, but music projects fall under NYSCA's Music funding area, not MAAF.
• Unlimited episodic work: Ongoing web series or podcasts are not eligible.
• Travel outside New York State: Funding may not be used for travel expenses outside New York State.
• Student works: Thesis projects or exhibitions are not eligible, though exceptions may be made for career artists who have returned to school for postgraduate work.
• Meals and hospitality: Not eligible for MAAF support.

Eligibility

Who Can Apply

• Individual artists who reside in New York State
• The applicant must hold all rights to distribute and exhibit the work as proposed
• Media art must be the core discipline of the submitted work. Cross or multi-disciplinary work must demonstrate media art as the primary discipline.
• Full-time enrolled students are not eligible, with case-by-case exceptions for career artists in postgraduate study. Student works (thesis projects, exhibitions) are not eligible regardless of the applicant's career status.

What Is Not Eligible

• Applicants who applied to NYSCA Support for Artists for the June 26, 2025 deadline are not eligible for MAAF for Artists 2026, regardless of whether they received funding. (Applicants to the earlier July 13, 2024 deadline for 2025 support remain eligible.)
• Applicants may not apply for NYSCA Support for Artists and Wave Farm MAAF Artist Support in the same funding year.
• Recipients of a NYSCA Statewide Community Regrant from another center in the same funding year are not eligible.
• NYFA Fellowship recipients may apply to MAAF in the same year.
• Public presentations must serve New York State audiences.

2026 Application Timeline

• January 15, 2026: Application deadline
• April 2026: Notification to applicants
• May 2026: Public announcement of grantees
• April 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026: Project period
• January 31, 2027: Final report deadline

As of July 2026, the 2026 application deadline has passed. The next cycle is expected to open in Fall 2026. Subscribe to Wave Farm's newsletter for updates.

MAAF for Organizations

Wave Farm also administers a separate MAAF for Organizations track, distinct from the artist program. This track provides up to $2,500 per application to current NYSCA grantees for technical strategies, online development, and hiring outside consultants for organizational and professional development. Priority goes to organizations with missions specific to media arts. This is not relevant to individual filmmakers unless they operate a NYSCA-funded media arts organization.

2026 Grantees

The 2026 MAAF for Artists selected 15 grantees from 233 proposals. The cohort includes Mehrnoush Alia, Zoe Beloff, Tarik Jeremiah Brown, Eva Davidova, Julie Flandreau, Erin Johnson, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Yuka Murakami, Cherry Nin, Laura Parnes, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tina Spangler, Sara Stern, Jordan Strafer, and James N. Kienitz Wilkins. The range of practices represented spans experimental video, sound art, installation, and emergent technology forms.

Who Should Apply

New York State-based media artists working in sound and moving image art, including experimental documentary, video art, sound art, and emergent technology forms. The $7,500 grant ceiling makes this program most useful for short-to-mid-length works and for artists whose primary needs are finishing costs or exhibition and distribution expenses rather than full production budgets.

Filmmakers working on feature-length narrative documentaries should look elsewhere: MAAF explicitly excludes this format for FY2026. Experimental documentary works made by individual artists remain eligible. If your work sits at the boundary between experimental documentary and narrative documentary, contact Wave Farm directly (info@wavefarm.org) before applying to confirm eligibility.

Artists who applied to NYSCA Support for Artists for the June 2025 deadline are locked out of MAAF for 2026. Plan your NYSCA funding applications across years to avoid disqualification from either program.

See Also

For post-production budget and storage planning, use the Storage and Footage Calculator. For building a distribution strategy for a completed experimental or documentary film, see Distribution Deals: What Filmmakers Need to Know. For layering small grants into a broader financing strategy, see Documentary Financing: Building Your Stack.