2025-2026 Spillway Fellowship

Location: MN — Southeast (Rochester / Austin / Winona)
Type: Grant / Fellowship / Award
Categories:
Visual Arts

Deadline: 06/25/2025

Apply

The Spillway Fellowship Program seeks applicants cultivating a range of work across visual art disciplines and socially-engaged practice.

Through support for early career artists and culture bearers from Minnesota and the Native Nations in this geography, fellowships will be offered to artists and culture bearers whose practice is committed to considering the multilayered intersections of culture, land, and history. To advance this work and deepen these connections, fellows will build relationships with individuals and organizations across multiple local visits that culminate – through time and trust – in a public presentation, event, or exhibition in Winona, Minnesota, a town located along the Mississippi River in Dakota homelands.

With support from The Jerome Foundation, the Spillway Fellowship Program will connect the creativity and vision of fellows to the complex social, historical, land-based questions, legacies, and intercultural dynamics of this region. Drawing upon Art of the Rural’s long-term local and regional partnerships, this fellowship offers artists and culture bearers the time and relational space in which to engage and offer their creative practice towards meaningful social impacts.

The program offers a deep, intercultural, and career-expanding experience to early career artists and culture bearers while providing the region with opportunities for public dialogue, community creativity, and intercultural exchange. Art of the Rural will create specific, valuable media to document the fellows’ work, and activate our national network of artists, curators, thought leaders, and partners to engage with the artists and expand visibility and network connectivity for their work.

Apply by June 25. Please review all materials before applying at artoftherural.org/fellowship.

FELLOWSHIP AT-A-GLANCE
In 2025, two selected individuals will have the opportunity to move through the Spillway Fellowship Program.
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The fellowship will take place in the Winona region between Summer 2025 – Fall 2026. Fellows will visit Winona for two multi-day visits in Summer/Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Between visits, Fellows will be digitally connected with individuals, organizations, and communities that further their creative and relational process.
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The majority of the fellowship is self-guided, social, and research-based, but studios/creative workspaces can be made available as needed during the multi-day visits, which are facilitated by Art of the Rural and our partners. Each fellow will receive $10,000 in support, with travel, food, and lodging costs covered by Art of the Rural. Through Art of the Rural’s partnership with Honoring Dakota Project, fellows will also have the opportunity to learn more about the dynamics of Dakota life and culture, while reflecting upon the futures of intercultural collaboration in this region.
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Fellows will also be supported to attend public presentations by the first year’s fellows in the Fall 2025, thus creating threads of conversation and relationships that will advance their creative practice. In the Fall 2026, this year’s selected fellows will exhibit work at the Winona County History Center or Engage Winona galleries, or offer a public presentation/event with partners cultivated through the Fellowship’s relational process.‍

FELLOWSHIP AWARD
The Spillway Fellowship award of $10,000 covers these fellows’ time, reflection, and creative practice in engaging and learning from the land, cultures, and communities of the Winona region – and, from those relationships, creating work and presenting it publicly at the conclusion of the fellowship. Travel, food, and lodging costs are directly supported by Art of the Rural, as are costs associated with the form of public presentation chosen by the fellow.

Half of the stipend will be provided at the start of the fellowship, with the second half of the stipend provided after the first visit to Winona.‍

FELLOWSHIP TIMELINE
May 21: Applications open
June 4, 11am CT: Virtual information session
June 25: Applications close
July 9: Application review & fellowship invitations
July 14: Fellows announced
Summer/Fall 2025 (July-October): First multi-day visit to Winona, MN
September 18-20: Spillway Gathering in Winona, MN
Winter 2025 (November-February): Incubation Phase 1: Proposal of fellows’ public presentation
Spring 2026 (April-May): Second multi-day visit to Winona, MN
Summer 2026 (June-August): Incubation Phase 2: Preparation of fellows’ public presentation
Fall 2026 (September-October): Gathering & presentations in Winona, MN application process

The application form above will be open May 21 – June 25.

‍We welcome either video or written responses to each narrative application question. If you choose to provide written responses, please limit your answers to approximately 2,000 characters or 350 words per question. If you choose to make video submissions, please limit responses to approximately 2 minutes per question. Video submissions can be recorded directly in the application form.

We have also provided a text-based version of the application as PDF and DOCX above. If you need additional support or a different format, please contact our Programs Associate Hannah at hannah@artoftherural.org.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
Creative Practice: Fellows work must fall within visual art practice. This includes painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and film. Fellows may work in a variety of visual art media, including both traditional and new media, including filmmaking. The fellowship is not intended for commercial artists, musicians, dancers, performance artists, theatre artists, or others whose work is generally not presented in a visual art context.

Thematic Focus: Fellows’ work should engage with themes of land, public space, and community, or may be multidisciplinary but applied towards those themes.
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Location: Fellows who are legal residents of the state of Minnesota or the Native Nations in the region and have been residents for at least a year prior to the submission of an application. (Eligible applicants will have a street mailing address in this region.) Fellows must reside in the region until the end of the fellowship period.
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Travel: Fellows must be willing to travel to Winona four times between Summer/Fall 2025 and Fall 2026, including for two multi-day visits, as part of this fellowship experience to engage with individuals, communities, and organizations in the region.
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Presentation: Fellows must be willing to create and participate in a final presentation (exhibition, public program, event, developed through the fellowship process) in Fall 2026.
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Conflict of Interest Policy: Fellows cannot be staff, Board of Directors members, or consultants of Art of the Rural.‍

SELECTION CRITERIA
Quality & Clarity of Proposal: The strength of the proposed idea, clear consideration of the scope of work proposed and the applicant’s ability to see it through to completion.
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Value of Project to Fellow’s Development: Applicants for this opportunity must be early-career artists and culture bearers and show potential for development, innovation, deepened practice, or new growth.
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Benefit to the Community: This criterion can take many forms from enjoyment to beautification, civic engagement, filling a need or meaningful collaboration. Community can be defined in a variety of ways and applicants should speak to how their work will benefit their defined community.
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Quality of Work Samples: This criterion relates both the quality of the work shared as well as the degree to which the work samples support the fellow’s ability to complete the proposed work.
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SELECTION PANEL
Fellows will be selected by a multidisciplinary panel comprised of Art of the Rural staff and community partners.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

ABOUT ART OF THE RURAL
Art of the Rural is a nonprofit collaborative organization that works to resource artists and culture bearers to build the field, change narratives, and bridge divides. Our initiatives are long-term, trust-based efforts that co-create spaces for exchange and impact across the traditional dividing lines of place, practice, and lived experience.

ABOUT SPILLWAY
Spillway is a long-term, collaborative initiative grounded in the cultures, communities, and histories of the Upper Mississippi River region. Through support for artists, culture bearers, artisans, and storytellers – alongside the local organizations that support them – Spillway works to create the conditions for engaged projects that honor diverse lived experience, deepen regional relationships, and build rural-urban networks of knowledge-sharing and exchange that will create opportunities for artists, culture bearers, and artisans to thrive, connect with new colleagues and audiences.

The Spillway Fellowship Program is supported by the Jerome Foundation, and offers early career artists and culture bearers the unique opportunity to advance their practice within this evolving environment that has been cultivated by the range of partners in this region. Our local Spillway partners include the Honoring Dakota Project, Engage Winona, the Winona County Historical Society, and The Cedar Tree Project. Explore our website to learn more Spillway and our work in the region at artoftherural.org/initiatives/spillway.