Guidelines

Project Description: Your project description should address the who, what, when, where, why and how of your proposal to the best of your ability and where it is in the process of creation. We ask for a short description, which we will use in our own grant applications, and a long description, which we will use to visualize your project in all its queer glory and imagine how we will help make it come to be. You might not know all the details and that’s OK – it’s helpful to know where you’re still in process. 

Alignment with CQ Mission: We ask this to get a sense of how you see your project fitting into the mix of CQ’s activities, and how it might develop further through collaboration with CQ. We strive to embody our mission and values in our programs – in other words, it’s not just that everyone is queer and all the music we’re performing is by queer creators, but also that the structure of the event itself is somehow “queered.” How to curate chamber music events that truly build community through musicmaking? How can we move beyond the performer-audience presentational setup of a typical recital or quartet concert to bring people closer to each other and themselves? It might mean communal musicmaking, something participatory, something interdisciplinary, or simple tweaks to the typical concert format, or something else entirely – we can’t wait to hear your ideas.

Work Samples: We ask for one or two representative samples. If you need two to represent all the collaborators, that’s great; if one is enough to represent your work, then one is great! We have limited time to review samples, so please don’t send more than two, because then we feel sad that we can’t review them all. 
We will need to know some basic information about the sample as well as any passwords needed to access it. It will need to be uploaded somewhere like YouTube, Vimeo, Drive, Dropbox, etc - where it can be streamed in the browser, as opposed to downloaded.

Budget: Your budget can be in a spreadsheet, a written chart, or a narrative. It is very important to us, because it’s a big part of how we understand feasibility. Though we provide some financial support through Open Submission (historically between $1500-$3000 per project), we can’t fully fund your project, no matter how small your budget is. We are not a production company – we are truly looking to collaborate, and thus we are looking for evidence that the project has other support from sources like grants, donations, venue, a presenter, etc. Otherwise it’s not feasible for us to take it on.
We value equitable fees for artists.

The W.A.G.E fee calculator provides a starting place for understanding your rates in terms of your project’s total budget or your organization’s annual expenses. While CQ understands that every project is different, it’s important to us to see that artists are being paid realistically and in a way that values them as we make our decisions. You can definitely use the additional information section of the form to give any context that can help us understand budget decisions for your project.

For context, we paid $750 for three rehearsals and a concert in 2026; commission fees vary but are in the low four digits. 

Budget Support:
Here’s a free intro to project budgets from Candid. 
Here’s the template Danielle uses to sketch out project budgets at CQ.

If your budget is very simple, it can be just a paragraph or two or a short chart explaining where the money is coming from and how it’s being used. The main thing is that we see how you’re planning and on what scale, how feasible that seems with or without CQ’s help/funds, and that it more or less balances out. 

Still have questions?

Email us at hello@chamberqueer.org.