Microgrants 2026

If you are seeking funds to help realize a creative project related to digital art and networked culture, consider applying to Rhizome’s annual microgrants open call.

Since 2014, Rhizome has awarded small grants to support the creation of new web-based works.

This year, we invite proposals in the following categories, PERMANENCE, presented in partnership with Larva Labs, MISUSE, HANDMADE, and CO-OP. We are also offering an additional grant, the Terrell Davis Microgrants Fund, which you can learn more about below.

PERMANENCE, in partnership with Larva Labs 

Memory is lived and remade. Just as ballads and urban myths must be retold, data must be read, interpreted, and perhaps executed. The stories of our digital lives may drift further from the original with each retelling. Our creations can “survive” as objects, yet the tools, systems, and network context can shift around them, reshaping them in ways we may not even be aware of.

Permanence asks artists to reflect upon the practice (technical, political, or social) of keeping something alive over time. What does it mean for an artist to try to make something that is durable? To make something today that is intended to exist in a hundred years? Five hundred? A thousand? Can you do it? Should you?

Make something built to endure. Design a work intended to be translated and re-performed as its tools fall away or make something meant to live on in our memories. Can machines remember for us? Are there scenarios where decay or resisting documentation can be a form of care?  Who are the maintainers, and why?

MISUSE

This category invites projects that misuse the very technologies they depend on: staging a play in the comments section of a YouTube video. A Screensaver that plays 24/7.

Historically, a medium is validated as an art form after a certain number of artists take it up in earnest. What happens when artists instead misuse the platforms they once deemed legitimate? We are interested in works that deliberately use a platform against itself; that repurpose existing spaces on the web; that suggest alternative ways of seeing the online spaces we move through everyday; that seek out hyperspecific use cases for commercial tools.

HANDMADE

When a cup enters the world, it passes through many hands over its lifetime. Beginning with its maker, every subsequent user adds to the narrative of that object’s trek through the world. The role of touch extends far beyond the act of making. The maker’s touch—the touch that most often impacts us in the discourse of the handmade—is only the first in what is often a long story of touch.

Similarly to prehistoric mediums like drawing or printmaking, digital works are also thoughtfully crafted by humans. HANDMADE invites digital projects that use handmade processes or techniques as a key part of its development. Projects where the maker’s touch is felt, or inversely where the presence of digital technology can be felt on physical forms. Works in this category should not be made with AI.

Think 3D printed props, miniatures, armatures; setting up installations or activations local to your environment and documenting them; projection mapping, set design, practical effects, physical construction, optical illusions.

CO-OP

Most of our most worthwhile cultural artifacts result from collective behavior. Memetic movements appear as aftereffects of group chats; the absolute anarchy of thousands of keystrokes can somehow still complete a game of Pokémon.

CO-OP is interested in the tools that shape group decision-making processes, as well as the environments that enable us to gather, play, and negotiate our realities. CO-OP invites projects made by multiple collaborators, collectively-run websites, multi-player games, systems for negotiation, and works that transform shared internet spaces into sites for unexpected artistic creation.

What does it mean to make work inside of an Instagram groupchat? Where does the work go from there? Can commenting on a post be an artwork in its own right?

The Terrell Davis Microgrants Fund

This year, Rhizome is partnering with Joygill Moriah and Liz Mputu (LVLZ Healing Hub) to offer additional annual grants for artists who exemplify the legacy of digital artist and curator Terrell Davis. This fund aims to support work that speaks to Black and Afrodiasporic experiences, and projects in any category may opt-in to receive additional funding through this award.

Terrell Davis was a self-taught artist, designer, and curator who, before even entering college, had developed an expansive body of work that foreshadowed how many digital artists work today. Terrell championed digital art not only through his own prolific and singular practice but also through his numerous collaborations with other artists. 

He platformed internet artists and musicians through TenSquared, the virtual gallery he co-founded with Joygill Moriah at 16 years old; researched and archived early 2000s digital cultural history as a founding member of the Y2K Aesthetic Institute; and developed his euphoric artistic style that celebrated Black and queer creative expression through collaborations with PC Music and nightlife collectives such as Club Quarantine. His distinct voice, which incorporated early 2000s internet aesthetics such as vaporwave and seapunk, led to commercial design and VFX work for major brands like Nike and Opening Ceremony.

 Moving fluidly between digital art, commercial design work, curation, and community-building, Terrell modeled the hybrid practice that has since become common among artists working online. As a memory institution for digital art, Rhizome hopes to honor Terrell's legacy and influence through this annual fund.

Rhizome is partnering with registered nurse and digital artist, Liz Mputu (LVLZ Healing Hub), who helped to co-envision, develop the grant, and will be funding the reward for it this year.