The Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU) is offering grants to American nonprofit organizations to support direct exchange in the arts and the environment (and the intersection of the two) between professionals from the United States and the geographic region of 28 countries.
Focus Areas
TMU provides grants for costs associated with professional exchanges (both in-person and virtual) in the arts, the environment, and the intersection between these.
Arts
TMU supports exchanges between professional artists and designers, art managers and curators – primarily within the visual and performing (dance, music, theater) arts. In the performing arts, the grantees typically include choreographers, composers, directors, performers, and playwrights. In the visual arts, the grantees typically include artists and designers from a variety and combination of mediums, including ceramics, drawing, graphic design, painting, photography, printmaking, and traditional crafts. The grantees also include professional art and design administrators/managers, archivists, curators, historians, researchers, and those specifically working on cultural and language documentation and preservation.
They do not typically support professional exchanges focused on architecture, film, video, or literature.
Commonly supported exchanges in the arts include: creative artistic collaborations, curatorial research projects, performances given in conjunction with lectures/demonstrations and/or workshops, historic preservation projects, arts management programs, cultural documentation activities, and exchanges intended to aid nongovernmental arts organizations seeking greater institutional capacity and stability, and network-building.
Environment
TMU supports exchanges between professional, environmental activists, conservationists, researchers, and scientists. The grantees typically include those whose work emphasizes biodiversity preservation, ecosystem & habitat preservation, environmental advocacy, environmental law, environmental science, environmental sustainability, land use planning, species conservation, and sustainable development.
Commonly supported exchanges focused on the environment include: activities that facilitate more effective international contact and networking between environmental organizations; advanced training programs; joint events, conferences, seminars & workshops; collaborative environmental research projects; collaborative environmental actions, projects and programs (focused on the issue areas listed); and exchanges intended to aid nongovernmental, environmental organizations seeking greater institutional capacity and stability.
Intersection of Arts & Environment
TMU also supports exchanges at the intersection of the arts and environment. Typically, these types of intersecting exchanges fall into two categories:
collaborations between professionals in arts and environment intended to learn and draw inspiration from one another, cooperate, and/or explore areas for integrating ideas and methods from one another into their respective work
activities led by native communities that support Indigenous ways of knowing and being, wherein the arts and environment are inherently interconnected
They do not support exchanges where the primary participants or beneficiaries are youth or students.
Benefits
They believe that direct, person-to-person, international exchanges produce multiple benefits at various levels:
Individual: Exchange is personally transformative, creating space for individual reflection, healing, mental and spiritual well-being. Exchange is contemplative and provocative, challenging individuals to question their own biases, privilege, views, and preconceptions.
Interpersonal: Exchange builds trusted, lasting and rewarding personal friendships and professional relationships. Exchange results in deeper empathy and mutual understanding between diverse people from different cultures, identities, places, and lived experiences.
Professional: Exchange provides opportunities for professional development, inspiration, motivation, and validation. Exchange enables creative and scientific collaboration, resulting in new knowledge, new ideas, new bodies of work, new ways of thinking and doing.
Communal: Exchange builds a collective sense of belonging, community, solidarity and security, provides moral support, and helps overcome isolation and marginalization.
Systemic: Exchange serves as a form of direct ‘citizen diplomacy,’ encouraging greater cooperation, harmony, respect, tolerance, and mutual understanding among people, cultures, and countries. And exchange reveals the interconnectedness with others (both human and nonhuman) within both the wider societal and natural systems.
Happiness: Exchange is fun, joyful,playful and pleasurable, and enhances overall quality of life.
Eligible Projects
Projects that involve direct, in-depth professional interaction in the arts, the environment, and the intersection between these with the potential for sustained collaboration, show evidence of professional accomplishment, and respond to social contexts and engage local communities.
Eligible Countries
Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Countries not listed here are ineligible for funding.
Eligibility Criteria
TMU grants are made to American nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations.
Typically, it is these organizations that submit Initial Inquiries and, if invited, Full Proposals. TMU does not make grants directly to individuals or institutions abroad. However, an Initial Inquiry may be made by an individual or institution in any of the countries in which TMU is active.
If invited, individuals or organizations that do not have 501(c)(3) status may then submit a Full Proposal through the fiscal sponsorship of an American nonprofit organization.
The fiscal sponsor must submit a letter stating their involvement with the project and their willingness to administer any grant funds, as well as a copy of their 501(c)(3) determination letter.
Note: TMU only supports exchanges between adult professionals in the arts and environmental fields. They do not support exchanges where the primary participants or beneficiaries are students or youth.
