Fellowship for Utopian Practice

The Fellowship is a process-based testing ground for new ideas that connect artistic practice, civic engagement, and social justice. Through the Fellowship for Utopian Practice, Culture Push serves artists by providing creative, analytical, and logistical tools in the creation of truly transformative projects. The Fellowship program is open to artists and other professionals working in any discipline who wish to expand the boundaries of their practice. Six to eight Fellows are selected for each application cycle.

Applicants are required to thoroughly review our organization’s mission and the Fellowship Guidelines on this page before submitting materials. Our Mission is HERE.

CONTACT: For general questions about the application, please write to cp@culturepush.org with the subject "Fellowship Question".

TIMELINE

• Sunday, October 5, 2025, 11:59 PM ET: Open Call deadline

• Mid-December 2025: All applicants receive results

• January 2026: First meeting

• January 2026 - January 2027: Continuing support and strategizing

Here are some things to keep in mind before beginning your application—please read carefully:

• WHAT: Each Culture Push Fellowship provides financial, logistical, and collaborative support for socially-engaged projects in the seed or ideation stage and grounded in the artist’s ongoing investment in a specific NYC community.

• WHEN: The Fellowship relationship lasts one calendar year, from January to December.

• WHERE: Proposed projects should meaningfully engage the five boroughs of New York City. While hybrid / virtual components are of course welcome, the Fellowship aims to support artists local to NYC in both location and intention. If you do not live in or propose to ground your project in NYC, this Fellowship will not be a good fit for you.

ELIGIBILITY

Applicants must have at least 3 years of experience in their field. Currently enrolled undergraduate students may not apply. Projects must be new, socially engaged work that have not received any prior institutional support and occur within the five boroughs of New York City. Group or collaborative proposals are welcome.

CRITERIA FOR PROPOSED PROJECTS

To be considered for the Fellowship, projects must:

• Take place within the 5 boroughs of NYC.

• Be interactive and engage the public (entirely or in part), in accordance with our mission. Note: Our definition of “civic engagement” includes public talks, live interactive components, skill-shares, participatory performances and similar activities that in some way address the public good and have clearly defined goals for serving as a means of generating social change.

• Test a new and previously unrealized idea that expands the scope of the applicant’s current practice.

• Not be considered as an exhibition or the production of a ‘show,’ but rather a series of events and/or actions aimed at engaging the public.

• Occur during the Fellowship year.

WHAT WE PROVIDE

• A stipend of $2250

• Fiscal sponsorship for additional grant-based fundraising and individual contributions

• Strategizing meetings with Culture Push staff, including development and production support

• Access to Materials for the Arts (see HERE for their website).

• An opportunity to foster community through meetings with Culture Push Board, Executive Director, Staff, Advisors, and other Fellows

• Marketing via the Culture Push network, email list, and social media contacts for promotion purposes

• Mentorship with experts in the field

• A Thought Partner 

• An opportunity to edit our online journal, PUSH/PULL

• An opportunity to present your research and project development at the annual Culture Push Symposium

• An opportunity to exhibit your work at a public presentation produced by Culture Push alongside past and current Fellows

• NOTE: Culture Push does not provide a venue or exhibition space for projects, but we will work with Fellows to help secure suitable site(s).

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Do I have to live in New York to apply?

Technically, you do not have to reside in New York City to be eligible for the Fellowship. However, the Fellowship is designed to support artists and other creative people engaging directly with people, places, and institutions in New York City, so residence within commuting distance of the five boroughs is required.

What kind of work samples should I include?

Include your strongest work samples. We understand that you are proposing a project that you have not yet completed or developed, and understand that your work samples will not necessarily be representative of your proposed project. This is why we encourage you to submit what you believe to be the best example of your work to date. If you think it would be helpful, feel free to send a sketch, rendering, or mock-up of your idea.

What do you mean by “seed stage?”

By seed stage or beginning stages, we mean ideas that have not yet been extensively tested and developed. This can be a new idea, or it can be an idea that has been kicking around in your head for a while but has never been realized. Also, if you have gone through initial prototyping steps, that is still considered a seed stage idea. 

How long does the Fellowship last?

The Fellowship will last for one full year.

Do I have to complete the project within the Fellowship year?

No, your project does not need to conclude within the Fellowship year in order to be successful. We only require that you develop your project during the year and have at least one public presentation of your work. The Fellowship is a process-based program. We are more interested in supporting artists as they develop sustainable working strategies to pursue unusual lines of inquiry than in seeing a “finished” product. Many Fellowship projects become long-term commitments that only begin with the Fellowship.

2024-25 INFO SESSION RECORDING:

What does process-based mean?

Process based working and thinking means giving yourself permission to slow down, take time to think and contemplate, ask questions, dream vibrantly, play, incubate ideas, try them out, make mistakes, try ideas out again, critically analyze ideas, consider factors like feasibility, practicality, and alignment with goals or constraints, try different approaches, challenge conventions, and create emergent strategies. It also means assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each idea, and determining which ideas feel the best and have the most potential.

What is civic engagement? 

At Culture Push, we define civic engagement as collaboration and group learning through active and  participatory experiences. It is collective activism and advocacy working to bring about political or social change through increasing public awareness of and support for specific causes. Past Fellows works have engaged with prison abolition, trans rights, Black Joy and Liberation, Disability Justice and Climate Justice, to name a few.

What do we mean by “the public” or “community?” 

“Public” can be a small group, or a wide-ranging, more general geographic or affinity-based group (for example, the public that uses a particular park, versus the New York City public). “Community” is a deeply subjective word, but in our case we are thinking about a self-defined affinity group, which can be geographical, racial, ethnic, values-based, practice-based, etc. We welcome projects that work within the applicant's own self-defined community (for example, 2023 Fellow Sabina Sethi Unni created Flood Sensor Aunty, a play and public engagement that advocated combatting flooding, climate change, and despair through knowing your neighbors, designed for her own brown communities in Queens and Nassau County’s South Asian Indo Caribbean enclaves) or work that connects to communities outside your own (for example, the work Sara Zielinski (Fellow 2023) has done with prison abolition and with people impacted by incarceration and the so-called justice system)