The Application Portal for Round 20 is now open. 

Questions? Please visit our guidelines and FAQ page or contact us at [email protected].

2026 Guidelines

BASIC INFORMATION
Alternative Exposure grants directly fund visual arts projects that provide frameworks of support for artists to create and continue their work. Grants support projects that present the work of more than one artist and can support the creation and/or presentation of work. Both individuals and groups are eligible to apply on behalf of a project; 501c3 non-profit entities are not eligible to apply. If applying as a group, the artistic group or venue can be either long-standing or formed specifically for this opportunity. 

APPLICATION
Your application must be completed online through the Submittable portal only. Applications are available in English and Spanish. 

ELIGIBILITY

• The lead organizer must have an address in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, or Sonoma County. For collectives or groups, additional collaborators may live outside of these counties but the majority of collaborators in the group must live in an eligible county.
• Resulting project activities must be accessible and presented to the public within at least one of the above areas.
• Funded projects must be completed before June 30, 2028 and after October 1, 2026. For projects or programs that are a part of an ongoing project, the work supported by Alternative Exposure should be completed within this timeframe.
  Applicants may be a lead organizer on more than one application, however, in these cases only one of their projects can be selected for funding.
• Applicants that have received Alternative Exposure grants from Rounds 1-17 (2007-2023) are eligible to apply again as lead organizers if the first project was successfully completed and the final report was submitted to Southern Exposure.
• Grantees from Rounds 18 (2024) or 19 (2025) are NOT eligible to apply again as lead organizers in Round 19. However, former grantees (both lead organizers and additional collaborators) from all previous rounds may participate in 2026 applications for new, unrelated projects as collaborators.
• Informally organized groups, collectives, or art spaces with budgets under $100,000 are all eligible to apply. 

WHAT ALTERNATIVE EXPOSURE DOES NOT SUPPORT

• Projects presented by established art spaces or 501c3 nonprofit organizations are NOT eligible to apply. 
• LLC's, collectives, or art spaces  with an annual operating budget of over $100,000
• Work that is not based in the visual arts. Traditional theatrical or dance performances, film productions, or purely sound/music performances without a visual component 
• An individual artist seeking support to make their own work
• Individual artists whose work includes groups of people in its creation, but whose finished work is solely considered that of the individual artist, not the collaborative group as a whole
• Work that is presented at Southern Exposure
• Board members, staff, or curatorial council members of Southern Exposure are not eligible to apply as lead organizers of projects.
• Alternative Exposure cannot distribute funds directly to a fiscal sponsor. 

REVIEW PROCESS AND SELECTION CRITERIA

Southern Exposure’s review process will take 6-8 weeks. Proposals will be reviewed by an impartial panel of three local and/or national jurors who are artists and arts professionals. Reviews will be based on the following criteria:

• The artistic strength and creative vision of the proposed project.
• How the proposed project will support Bay Area artists.
• The demonstrated capacity of the applicant(s) to realize the proposed project.
• The completed project's accessibility to the public and its commitment to serving a local constituency.
• The project's support for a diverse artistic community beyond those historically privileged by arts institutions, with priority given to projects led by Black, Indigenous, POC, queer, trans, GNC, disabled, and low-income artists

Proposals will be reviewed by a panel of three local and/or national jurors made up of artists and arts professionals currently working in the field of visual arts.

APPLICATION CHECKLIST:

• Applicant information
• Your Proposed Project
• Budget
• Visual Support Materials
• Annotated Descriptive List of Support Materials
• Demographic and Contact Information

1. APPLICANT INFO
General information about the applicant(s). All biographies must be in narrative form. Do NOT submit individual resumes or artist CVs.

1. YOUR PROPOSED PROJECT
Outline your project in the form of a brief summary along with a full description and address the following:
A) Project Title
B) Project Summary (100 words max.)

• Summarize your project in a short paragraph.

C) Full Project Description (700 words max.)

• Describe your project in detail.
• What form will your project take? (e.g. exhibition, public art project, event, performance, publication, film series, interactive website, archive, publication, etc.)
• Where will your project take place? (Proposed projects may not take place at Southern Exposure.) If you don’t have a location yet, how do you plan to secure one? If your project does not require a physical venue, how will it be publicly accessed?
• Address your motivations for the project and your plans to support local artists.
• Who is your intended audience? What kind of community impact do you anticipate your project will have?
• Tell us about your project timeline and include milestone dates relevant to your project. (Refer to the ELIGIBILITY section for restrictions on project start and end dates.)

3. BUDGET

Complete the budget form with a project budget that estimates all of your anticipated expenses and income (including donated, or in-kind services and labor). This fillable PDF is best used with Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. You will be prompted to upload the completed budget form when you are completing the online application.

(Find samples of previous grantee budgets here.)

Click HERE to access the required budget form in google sheets, y en español aquí. click File>Make a copy, fill out your copy, and share a link to your budget form, or download a budget form as a fillable pdf HERE. y en español aquí. You may make a copy to fill out the form in google sheets or download the form to fill it out in Adobe Acrobat or Preview or print and fill it out by hand.

4. VISUAL SUPPORT MATERIALS
Include up to two forms of the following support materials with your application. Applications that do not include visual material are not competitive. 

• Up to 15 digital images – formatted as JPG, GIF, TIFF, or PNG files (not to exceed 800 x 600 pixels, 180 dpi). Each image file should be labeled with the name of the project and a number that corresponds to an annotated image list (see below). For example, the first jpg submitted for the project, ArtHaus, should be labeled ArtHaus_01.jpg.
• Video: You may submit up to three works or three excerpts of works. We will view up to FIVE minutes of work in total. Please submit URLs to Vimeo, Youtube, or a personal portfolio website.
• Web-based Projects: submit a list of up to 3 URLs.

5. ANNOTATED CHECKLIST OF VISUAL SUPPORT MATERIALS

Include a checklist that corresponds with each item of your visual support materials. Indicate artist name or organizer’s name, title, year, medium, and a brief description of each image (digital image, video, publication, website, etc.).

6. CONTACT INFORMATION
Tell us how we can get in touch with the lead organizer, and up to six additional collaborators.

SUBMITTABLE TIPS

• You will need to create a free Submittable account or sign in with Google or Facebook credentials to submit to these forms.
• You can save a draft of your work if you would like to finish filling out the form at a later date.
• If anything changes with the information you submitted, please request to edit the submission / If you need to make changes to your form, please withdraw your submission and resubmit.
• Submittable works best on Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Internet Explorer is not supported. Please make sure you are using a supported browser.

FAQ’s

A list of guidelines and frequently asked questions can be found here in English or here in Spanish. 

APPLY TODAY!

Your application must be completed online through the Submittable portal only. Applications are available in English and Spanish.