Congratulations to our 2018 European Leadership Summit (ELS) Civic Ignition Grant Winners!  We received 13 submissions and had about 30 participants join us to judge the cycle at our meet up and workshop.  It was a great conversation and the workshop took about 90 minutes to complete.  

Congratulations to the winners:

001 Transforms (Kyiv, Ukraine):
We believe volunteering, permaculture and media art are essentials of future. Why not combine all of them in one project! We (001 art center) have a beautiful courtyard right near our entrance door. Also we have big abandoned building neighboring the courtyard – to use for projection mapping. We are in contact with Meconomica – a community organization that is interested in our yard as a potential place for an urban farm or garden. In the same time we have lots of volunteers who help frequently.  The process will be weekly events engaging both permaculture enthusiasts and media artists / parametric designers and aiming to transform a place in the heart of Kyiv by creating a unique structure.  This will change the heart and image of our city, our center, and our community using art as a catalyst.
Website:  https://001.studio.run
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/001kyiv/

This grant was particularly difficult for the workshop attendees to decide on their top choice.  In light of this the participants decided they would raise their own funds amongst the summit participants to try and fund a second project.  001 Transforms was the project the workshop felt the network should be funding with the money provided by Burning Man, but the following project is what the participants felt they should be funding themselves:

Nea Kavala Art without Borders: Refugee art workshops and exhibits (Greece):  
We provide an ongoing platform for refugee children and adults in Greece to address their trauma by making art (drawing, painting and jewelry), and raise awareness about the refugee crisis and funding for the refugee artists by organizing art shows internationally every month to exhibit and sell their art.  
Given increasing intensity of the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, refugees continue to pour into Greece by sea with almost 30,000 new sea arrivals registered in 2017, and nearly 5,000 arrivals in the past 3 months of 2018. Over half (60%) of new arrivals are women and children and nearly all are suffering from trauma/PTSD of the wars they have lived or the journey they undertook to escape the war. The mission of Love Without Borders for Refugees in Need is to fill gaps in refugee support services in Greece by organizing art workshops for refugees to create art, as well as raising awareness worldwide about the refugee crisis and those affected through exhibitions of their artwork. The project began in 2016 and continues today.
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/478293189015540/
Want to help us hit our fundraising goal for this project?  
Make a donation here and write ‘ELS’ in your public comment.

What is the ELS Civic Ignition Grant?                                                                                                                      
A program aimed at funding innovative community & civic projects within the greater European region.  We are interested in programs that create collaborations, produce direct actions, utilize several of the 10 Burning Man Principles, are reproducible, and creatively tackle local social problems. This grant gives anyone the opportunity to submit a collaborative, creative, and principle-focused project with a chance to win up to a €1,200 grant.

Timeline:
–  Grant Opportunity is announced on March 2nd. 
–  Deadline for grant submissions is March 30th (Midnight UTC)
–  Workshop Participants will review the grant proposals at the 2018 ELS in Nantes, France (April 5-8)
–  Winner(s) will be announced Monday evening at the ELS  (April 8th)

Apply here:  http://bit.ly/2EPJhJF

What’s special about the ELS Civic Ignition Grant?
Submissions to the 2018 ELS Civic Ignition grant cycle will be workshopped and judged by a group of participants and community leaders that attend this year’s ELS Civic Ignition Grant Workshop. This group will be using the submissions as material to review and workshop while learning how to administer their own civic grant programs.

Who is eligible to apply?
Individuals, Groups, and Not-for-Profits are all eligible to apply.  We encourage projects be endorsed by a local Burning Man Regional Contact.  The RC does not need to be a project lead, or heavily involved with the process, rather they are simply endorsing the project and the leaders who are submitting.  We recognize not all regions have local RC’s and we encourage you to apply even if no RC is able to endorse.

How much can you ask for?
The maximum grant that maybe awarded is €1,200.  We encourage your project’s viability to not be solely dependent on this grant.  Think about other sources of funding that might be available.  Grants awarded could be less than the full amount.

What types of proposals will likely not get funded by this program?
Programs that are solely based on artistic endeavors and do not have a community or civic aspect will most likely not be considered for funding.  Funds should not be used for direct fundraising, chapter promotion efforts, or for paying people for their work.

What follow-up will be expected by grant recipients?
All recipients will be expected to submit written reports on what they have accomplished and learned in the course of their projects, along with accompanying visual media.  This media will be hosted on the Burners Without Borders website.

Who won the Civic Ignition Grant in the past?                                                                                      
2017 ELS Civic Ignition Grant winners

2016 ELS Civic Ignition Grant winners

> How to create a Project.