Obtaining Financial Aid

What we do

The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) is a public corporation under the responsibility of the Minister of Culture and Communications.

Our mission is to support, in every region of Québec, creation, experimentation, and production in the professional arts and literature and to promote the dissemination and visibility of works in Québec, Canada, and abroad.
Discover our mission

“Sportriarcat”, a project combining theater and dance, presented in March 2023 by the theater company: “Les Precieuses Fissures”.
© Maryse Boyce

What we offer

The CALQ awards grants to professional artists and non-profit organizations. The CALQ’s funding programs fall into two categories: support to individuals and support to arts organizations.

This financial aid helps support a range of projects and activities and covers a variety of artistic disciplines: circus arts, multidisciplinary arts, digital arts, visual arts, popular song, film and video art, dance, literature and storytelling, arts and crafts, music, architectural research, and theatre.

Discover our programs at a glance and learn more about the grants available.

Artists

Divided into nine components, this grant program offers financial support for a wide range of activities in all disciplines, irrespective of the artist’s experience. This program recognizes the many roles played by artists in the creation of a work – from ideation to dissemination – and offers increased financial aid to support them as they develop their practice and advance in their careers.

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Working with the community, the CALQ signs territorial partnership agreements with cities and regional country municipalities in all regions of Québec to finance, through matching funding, artistic projects that formally involve territorial partnership initiatives.

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Many talented Québecers shine on the international stage. To ensure their ongoing presence, the CALQ offers several types of financing to meet the different needs of artists and writers. For example, these grants enable the presentation of works, participation in conferences or training, or a presence at festivals.

The CALQ also manages a large network of studios, artist exchanges, and studio-apartments, in some 40 sites for creation and production, to offer creators across disciplines opportunities for residencies to stimulate their professional efforts.

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The Vivacité program is for professional artists and writers who are immigrants or members of a visible minority, from all disciplines and all regions of Québec.

Applications may be submitted at any time, and applications are evaluated by a jury made up of artists, creators, and cultural workers representative of cultural diversity.

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Open, inclusive, flexible, and tailored to the needs and realities of Indigenous cultures and the particularities of their methods of creation and dissemination, this program is a tool to support Indigenous arts communities in their efforts at reappropriation, reconstruction, and development.

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Committed for several years to improving the accessibility of disabled artists to its programs, the Council has developed financial assistance for submitting an application and for carrying out projects. This aid is deployed in all programs aimed at artists and writers.

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Organizations

With these different types of financial aids, the CALQ helps arts organizations in their one-time, local, national, and international projects for creation, dissemination, and development. Depending on the arts discipline, the programs:

- Facilitate the circulation of Québec artworks within and outside the province;
- Receive works from outside Québec to introduce them to local audiences;
- Help organizations develop markets outside Québec;
- Foster the production and dissemination of new creations or revivals of works;
- Encourage new forms of artistic cooperation, particularly through coproduction and reciprocity agreements;
- Support awareness, promotion, and dissemination activities that increase the visibility of artists and the development of disciplines, and that advance knowledge in artistic practices.

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Mission support offers financial support for four years for the realization of a series of activities related to the artistic mission of organizations that have been in operation for at least five years, that are able to plan medium- and long-term activities, and that have recurrent activities.
Specific programming support allows organizations to submit a program of activities for the duration of their choice, at the moment they decide.

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Working with the community, the CALQ enters into territorial partnership agreements with cities and regional country municipalities in every region of Québec to finance arts projects that formally involve territorial partnership initiatives.

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The CALQ offers a number of funding programs designed to support arts organizations in their efforts to develop markets, set up distribution networks on different continents or tour outside Quebec. Grants are also available for international co-productions and for hosting works from outside Quebec.

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The Recognition for organizations program supports:

1 —Projects involving the creation and dissemination of works from Indigenous arts organizations and their visibility across Québec and beyond its borders.

2 — Indigenous arts organization initiatives, development, and consolidation.

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The Cirque de la Pointe-Sèche troop during the “Charcoal” show.
© Élyme Gilbert

The financial aid application process

From searching for the program that best reflects your situation to producing a grant use report, click each step to find out more about the stages of a financial aid application.

By following the process, you maximize your chances of submitting a complete application. You will also obtain invaluable advice about your responsibilities should you receive a grant.

Step 1

Search for financing

To identify the programs available to you, you can perform a search, filtering criteria based on your profile. This will point you toward the financial aid available to you.

Step 2

Read the conditions of eligibility

Before applying for funding, take the time to carefully read the details of the program that interests you to ensure your project is eligible. If any terms are unfamiliar, you can consult the glossary. This link will open in a new window

Step 3

Apply via Mon Dossier CALQ

Register for Mon dossier CALQ (for artists This link will open in a new window or for organizations This link will open in a new window) to submit your project and track the progress of your application in real time. If you obtain financial aid, you can use the portal to submit your report on the use of your grant and the impact of your project.

In certain cases, you can also send in the application form via WeTransfer. Instructions for doing so are on the form.

N.B. When submitting the application, be sure you have all the support documentation requested. Otherwise, you may have to start the application over.

Step 4

Verification of your application’s eligibility

A CALQ program officer will verify whether your application meets the eligibility criteria for the program in question.

You can track the status of your application directly via Mon dossier CALQ.

You will then receive a response on the admissibility of your request directly via Mon dossier CALQ (for artists This link will open in a new window or for organizations This link will open in a new window).

Step 5

Evaluation of your application

A committee of peers (jury, advisory committee, or selection committee depending on the program) will evaluate your application according to the evaluation criteria indicated in the description of the program to which you have applied. In some cases, the CALQ may also call on external assessors and its own staff to conduct an evaluation.

To find out more about the role and composition of our juries and committees, you can consult the corresponding policy. This link will open in a new window

Once the evaluation is done, CALQ teams make recommendations to the board of directors, which ratifies them.

Step 6

Decision about your application

If your application is successful, the amount of financial aid will be indicated in the grant announcement letter.

If your application is denied, this does not mean that your work is not deserving or that your application was not satisfactory. The evaluation of applications for financial aid is a competitive process, and budgets for each program are limited.

You can obtain feedback about the evaluation of an application for certain programs.

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Step 7

Realization of the project

If you are an artist, writer, or curator, consult the Guide for grant recipients This link will open in a new window for the terms of payment of the grant once your application has been approved.

If you are an arts organization, terms will be indicated in your letter of agreement.

If you obtain financial aid, it is important to acknowledge the CALQ. To find out how to use our logo, consult our usage standards. This link will open in a new window

Remember to keep your bills and document your process, as these will be required in the next step.

Step 8

Production of the report

You must submit a grant use report within three months after the end of your project. The report must be accompanied by documentation of expenses.

Step 9

Get answers to your questions

Do you have questions after reading about a program? Feel free to contact the program officer indicated in the “contact” section of each program.

To found out more about grants to artists and for helpful tips, watch the instructional videos (in French only) produced by our program officers.

Consult our FAQ This link will open in a new windowabout grant program for artists for answers to frequently asked questions.

Useful links

Browse all the financial aids available

See our FAQ

Staff and contact information