OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISTS AND ARTS ORGANIZATIONS
Welcome to the Arts Center of the Capital Region.
We operate with a simple principle: art belongs to everyone.
From our mission to our values to our programs, we view the Arts Center as a creative and responsive organization with deep roots in the community, exciting collaborations and an expansive vision of how the arts can flourish in our region by helping to foster a supportive, inclusive and livable community.
We were founded in 1962 as the Rensselaer County Council on the Arts in Troy, NY, and it has been since these early days that we have partnered with the New York State Council on the Arts to manage the SCR program for Rensselaer, Albany and Schenectady Counties.
Our goal is to create a robust creative community that intersects, informs, and inspires the public while fostering growth in our artists and transforming our community’s cultural understanding and expression.
We achieve this goal through four core programmatic areas:
· arts in the public realm, in which we develop public art and exhibitions with and for the public
· community projects in which we foster neighborhood engagement
· arts education, in which we offer hundreds of classes a year for all ages and abilities, including community college and public-school programs, and
· artists’ services, in which we provide grants, funding and training services for artists, who are the foundation of our work.
Quick Guide for Completing Your Arts Thrive and Grow Report
Deadline: January 30, 2026
Before you fill out your report, here are a few helpful things to keep in mind:
1. Know Your Grant Type
- If you received an individual artist grant, it’s completely fine to list “0” for youth, audience, or community engagement if those were not part of your project.
- Community-based grants should reflect who benefited—estimate if exact counts aren't possible.
2. Whole Numbers Only
- For questions like:
- Number of Artists Participating
- Number of Youth Benefiting
- Number of Individuals Benefiting
Enter whole numbers only, no commas or decimals.
- Number of Artists Participating
3. It’s Okay to Say “None”
- If a category doesn’t apply to your project, just put “0.”
This won’t negatively affect your report—it just helps us understand the impact clearly.
4. Be Honest About Changes
- If your project changed from the original plan or budget, that’s okay—just explain briefly in the space provided.
5. Final Tips
- Make sure your organization or artist name matches what we have on file.
- Be sure to use your current address and double-check your NYS Senate and Assembly Districts using the links in the form.
5. Images + Documents
- You are not required to upload images, video files, or sound files as part of your report.
ART CONNECTS REPORT: DEADLINE, January 30th, 2025
The Arts Center of the Capital Region is proud to support 17 artists across seven counties through the Art Connects Artist Grant Program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the State of New York. As part of this process, artists are required to submit a grant report by January 30, 2025, sharing updates on their funded projects. These reports will help us highlight the impact of your work and demonstrate how the program strengthens the Capital Region’s creative community.
BraVa! Call for Submissions 2025
The Arts Center of the Capital Region is partnering with YWCA of the Greater Capital
Region for their 10th Annual “BraVa!,” a fundraiser seeking to provide new bras at no
cost to those who need them and who live either at YWCA-GCR or in the Greater
Capital Region.
The event will feature writers from around the region and beyond who will read jury-
selected poems and essays or perform songs and monologues on the topic of the
brassieres in their lives. The pieces will touch on the subject from many viewpoints and
range from poignant to hilarious.
The idea for the event developed out of a conversation between author, editor and
teacher Marion Roach Smith, who taught memoir writing for many years at The Arts
Center, and the former Director of Development and Marketing at the YWCA-GCR.
During a discussion on the holiday needs for the residents, Marion learned that bras are
always in desperately short supply for the residents at the YWCA of the Greater Capital
Region. “This struck a powerful chord with me, and we decided right there to do
something about it.”
A brand-new bra with tags is part of the $35 admission price for the night. In the nine
years in which the event has taken place, more than 4,725 bras have been collected, all
of which have been made available to those in need. This year, the event will take place
on the evening of Thursday, November 6 th , 2025, from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM at The Arts
Center of the Capital Region, 265 River Street, Troy, NY.
Please submit pieces of no more than 750 words in length on the topic of the role of
bras in our lives.
Submission is open to all.
The pieces can be essays, monologues, poems or songs.
Please: No sexualized pieces should be submitted. Also, please note that every year we
get far too many stories about training bras and first bra stories.
Songs should be no longer than 3.5 minutes in duration.
With your submission, please include:
Title of the work
Short bio
Contact email
Whether or not you are willing to read/perform your piece.
A jury will select from the pool. Deadline to submit is October 1, 2025. You will be
contacted by October 17, 2025 about your submission. The event has grown to the
extent that we can no longer supply readers for those who cannot attend.