ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street centers Kansas City’s most forward-thinking visual artists, writers, and performers—acting as the primary incubator, provocateur, and connector for the region’s contemporary arts community, and its leading advocate on the national stage. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $2.5 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
STATEMENT ON OPPORTUNITY EQUITY
Charlotte Street values an equitable, diverse, and inclusive art community, which we interpret as all artists having fair access to the tools and resources they need to realize their artistic endeavors. We acknowledge structural inequities that have excluded individuals and communities from opportunities based on race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, class, age, and geography, and strive to counter those inequities in our work. We encourage panelists and selection committees to actively consider and seek to recommend a diverse pool of applicants as finalists and recipients of these awards and all Charlotte Street programs.
Rocket Grants receive support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and are developed and implemented though a partnership between the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO and the Spencer Museum of Art, at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. These grants provide opportunities for Kansas City area artists to make and share experimental work and ideas in public spaces around the region - by providing direct support for exceptional, under-the-radar, artist-driven, and artist-centered projects.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: June 17, 2026 at 11:59pm
ELIGIBILITY: • Artists, curators, collectives, collaborative groups, partnerships, and artist-run spaces residing within an 80-mile radius of the Kansas City metropolitan area are eligible to apply. • If applying as an artistic group, this group can be long-standing or created specifically for this project. • Nonprofit, 501(c)3 organizations are NOT eligible to apply. • All artists must be over 21 at the time of the application, and may not be full-time students at any time during the application or award period (May 6, 2026 to October 1, 2027). • All exclusions apply for the entire period of the application and award (May 6, 2026 to October 1, 2027).
For more information, please visit https://rocketgrants.org/ or contact Programs Manager at Charlotte Street, Kimberly Kitada at kimberly@charlottestreet.org.