working assumptions project grants

Each year, Working Assumptions awards six $10,000 Project Grants to support visual storytelling projects that inspire audiences and/or participants to look at family in new, meaningful ways. We invite proposals that employ photography or photo-based art for journalistic, artistic, therapeutic, educational, and research purposes. Our funding is unrestricted, allowing recipients complete creative freedom—provided that the project is intended for public consumption and that work on it began prior to the grant application deadline.

About the Grants

At Working Assumptions, we believe that visual storytelling can play a pivotal role in illuminating the complexities of family life today and fostering compassion for the experiences of others. As part of our mission, we support projects that employ photography and photo-based art to spur reflection and dialogue around caregiving, interdependence, and belonging.

What We Fund

Projects must have been initiated prior to the application deadline, and may range from photography series and books to public art projects, therapeutic programs, long-form journalism, performances, and more. We leave it up to applicants to define the term family as they see fit, knowing that caregiving and interdependence take place in a variety of contexts. If it’s family to you, it’s family to us.

Note that we give preference to projects that:

• Are based on first-person narration and/or on long-term, intertwined relationships with the photographic subjects
• Build on earlier, related work by the applicant
• Challenge our assumptions about what family, caregiving, and interdependence look like