Media Arts Assistance Fund: Distribution/Exhibition Support and Completion Support

Overview

The Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) is administered by Wave Farm through New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) regrant funding. The program operates two grant tracks for individual artists: Completion Support and Distribution/Exhibition Support. Both tracks provide grants of up to $5,000 to New York-based media artists working in sound and moving image, including documentary and experimental film and video.

Wave Farm is a media arts organisation based in upstate New York with a long history of supporting independent and experimental media practice. The MAAF program is part of Wave Farm's broader commitment to sustaining a diverse media arts ecosystem in New York State.

What It Funds

Completion Support provides funds of up to $5,000 for artists in the final stages of completing new work across all genres of sound and moving image art, including emergent technology forms. Eligible costs include final editing, colour correction, sound finishing, mastering, accessibility features, and the preparation of materials needed for distribution and exhibition. To be eligible, applicants must demonstrate how the Completion Support grant will lead to future distribution or exhibition of the finished work.

Distribution/Exhibition Support provides funds of up to $5,000 to assist artists in distributing or exhibiting 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, and the expenses associated with presenting work at venues, festivals, or community screenings.

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

Eligibility

Applicants must be individual artists based in New York State. Student works are not eligible, though exceptions may be considered for career artists who have returned to school for postgraduate work. The applicant must hold all rights to distribute and exhibit the work as proposed.

Filmmakers who receive a NYSCA Statewide Community Regrant from another centre in the same funding year are not eligible for MAAF Artist Support in that same year. NYFA Fellowship recipients may apply to MAAF in the same year.

Who Should Apply

New York-based documentary, experimental, and media art filmmakers with a work in the final stages of completion (Completion Support) or a finished work ready for distribution and exhibition (Distribution/Exhibition Support). The $5,000 grant ceiling makes these programs most useful for short-to-mid-length works and for filmmakers whose primary needs are finishing costs or festival and exhibition expenses rather than full production budgets.

See Also

For post-production budget and storage planning, use the Storage and Footage Calculator. For building a distribution strategy for a completed documentary or experimental film, see Distribution Deals: What Filmmakers Need to Know.