To encourage the continued development of an intellectual community around the arts and arts practice at BU and enhance our student-life experience, the BU Arts Initiative offers research grants for graduate and undergraduate research, as well as grants to faculty, students, and staff for projects that directly engage students in the arts.

Committees of faculty, staff, and students review all proposals. All BU Arts Initiative arts grants are subject to fiscal year restrictions and must be used in the fiscal year awarded.

Interdisciplinary Arts Programming Grants

Open to BU students, faculty staff

Spring 2025 Programming | Deadline: October 25, 2024

These matching grants are available to BU faculty, staff, and students, intended to fund programming open to any BU student and 1) engage BU students in the arts and 2) explore the intersection of arts and other academic disciplines. Priority will be given to programs developed and sponsored by more than one of BU’s 17 Colleges and Schools. Projects should embrace the university priorities of diversity & inclusion, a vibrant academic experience, and community.

Please contact us at artsinbu@bu.edu if you have questions about the grant information or procedures. Incomplete applications will not be accepted. We recommend reviewing these criteria carefully before submitting your proposal. Please note: at this time, we can only provide grant support to programs/offices/departments that have a University 909 account.

Interdisciplinary Arts Programming Grant Application


Arts Integration

Supporting arts integration for non-arts-related courses

Open to BU faculty

Rolling basis

Arts integration grants support the use of the arts as a tool for teaching non-arts disciplines. BU faculty may apply for up to $500 to support arts-related expenses for undergraduate and graduate courses. Possible initiatives might include a visiting artist, a class visit to a performance or exhibition, or arts material for the classroom. (Funds may not be used for refreshments.) Priority will be given to new initiatives integrating the arts into a course.

Arts Integration Grant Application


RA/GA Programming Grants

Open to RAs and GAs

Rolling basis

The BU Arts Initiative has a small fund to support RA/GA arts programming at Boston University. Please fill out the application linked below.consideration for RA/GA arts grants. Grants of up to $150 are available for the purchase of arts materials for a specific program. In most cases, the BU Arts Initiative will order the supplies for pick up in our office. Keep in mind that the BU Arts Initiative works to operate as sustainably as possible, which means we do our best to find alternatives to plastic and waste. Please fill out the application below for consideration of your grant proposal.

RA/GA Programming Grant Application


Graduate Arts Research Grants

Open to BU full-time students in good academic standing in either a master’s or doctoral program. BS/MS or BA/MA students who clearly will be in the graduate portion of their degree program during the period of proposed support are also eligible.

Deadline: November 25, 2024

All materials, including the faculty evaluation, must be received by 11 p.m. on November 25, 2024.

Important: Applicants must address each of the noted criteria in their proposals. Proposals missing information will not be reviewed.

Notifications will be made by January 21, 2025.

Please review current BU resources and policies around international travel.

Funding of up to $2000 is available for graduate arts research projects. Funds are limited and proposals will be competitive. The BU Arts Initiative and the Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs sponsor them.

The research may be traditional research of the arts (e.g., musicology, art history, study of performance or literature of any kind), practice-based research, or research from any discipline on the impact of the arts.

Please contact us at artsinbu@bu.edu if you have questions about the grant information or procedures. Incomplete applications will not be accepted. We recommend reviewing these criteria carefully before submitting your proposal. Please note: at this time, we can only provide grant support to programs/offices/departments that have a University 909 account.

Graduate Arts  Research Grant Application


UROP Arts Research Awards

Open to BU undergraduates

Apply via UROP grant application

The UROP Arts Research Awards are offered to support a student pursuing the arts as a primary area of inquiry. This would include traditional methods of inquiry in an arts field, as well as practice-based and practice-led research. Students interested in being considered should apply via the UROP grant application.

More Info

Here’s what some recent award winners had to say:

“I had an absolutely incredible summer bringing this piece to life. Over the past 10 weeks, I was able to devote all of my time to a project that had been sitting in the back of my head for months, and I’m so proud of the results!”  – Nadia Frye Leinhos, whose project –When the Catalyst “Can Take It”: The Performance of Violence in the Black Female Body – interrogates the notion of “race-blind” casting in theatre through the lens of three plays from the London West End 2019-2020 season. Looking specifically at black female actors, and examining their characters’ positions in each story’s violent climax.

“The experience of working on this project was an incredible one. As my first venture into serious art-historical scholarship, this project only served to affirm my passion for modern culture, history, and art production.” – Claire Rich, whose project – Women Artists 1918 – 1939: “Feminine Painting” in the Parisian Interwar Period explored exclusively female artist societies, where prominent painters such as Tamara de Lempicka and Marie Laurencin, among others, constructed their female-oriented art-historical narrative as a means of challenging popular discourse about the role of women in the arts.

“I am so grateful to this program for giving me the resources to conduct research that has given me valuable experience in my field of study. Being able to work on this project, even remotely at home, has given me extra confidence in my abilities and inspiration to work on more projects like this in the future.” – Anna Schoff, whose project – Computational Analysis of Ancient Greek Poetic Meter developed a Python program that could analyze the meter of Ancient Greek hexameter poetry.

Sample projects completed with help from BU Arts Initiative grants

BU Arts Events

Exhibitions, workshops, lectures, crafting days, concerts, and more. Find it with BU Arts Initiative!

Visit the BU Arts Calendar