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Grants of $2,500 and art supplies valued at $1,000 to USA and Canada PreK-8 schools whose principal is a funding source member for art-infused professional development programs that utilize creative capacity-building. Funding is intended to create a long-term school-wide commitment to art education and to help students develop skills in critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Visual art integration should be part of the creative capacity building plan; in addition, applicants may include dance, music, theater, art integrated ed tech, or media arts into the proposal.

Eligible plans should address specific needs and interests of your professional learning community. Consider how you'd create the team, craft a common vision, chart a strategic plan, embrace art-infused teaching strategies, build creative confidence, teach design thinking, align standards, embed creativity into the school culture, and use professional development, peer observation, and coaching to implement the plan.

Examples of Creative Leadership capacity building include the following:
- Providing a series of workshops delivered by teacher leaders, for teacher colleagues. For inspiration those teacher-leaders might attend a creativity leadership conference with the plan of delivering similar training to teachers, school-wide.
- Partnering with an arts organization or a university or museum that has expertise in art integration. Jointly building the advocacy case for the capabilities to implement art integration could include co-teaching and coaching sessions so the teaching strategy gets embedded into classroom teachers' practices.
- Organizing grade level and vertical professional learning teams who meet monthly to share art-infused lesson ideas and provide feedback to each other helps to implement art integrated cross-curricular lessons.
- Engaging parents in the Creative Leadership planning process and providing creativity theme books for faculty and parents to read and discuss in book club sessions. These conversations could be enriched by guest speakers/community members who specialize in the value of arts integration to increase student achievement.
- Using grant funds for substitutes so art teachers and classroom teachers have more collaboration and co-teaching time
- Helping teachers integrate hands-on visual art with ed tech apps, robotics, and other academic disciplines. A robust and innovative approach to interdisciplinary design thinking pedagogy can be the basis of staff workshops.

Preference will be given to applications that emphasize:
- Innovation: generate new ideas that build colleagues’ creative capabilities and confidence. Try something that isn’t currently common practice. Be original! This is not about painting a mural, planting a garden, or buying new tablets or 3D printers. It is about creative leadership, professional development, coaching colleagues and building their creative capacity and confidence.
- Collaboration: school-wide, with parents, and involving community partners. Build a creative, collaborative culture!
- Sustainability: ability to embed art-infused education in the school's future plans, beyond grant funding period. Long-term embedment is preferred over a single event such as an “art night”.
- Leadership: focus on articulating a shared vision, coaching colleagues, collaborating to increase creative experiences, and using authentic assessment that values children’s creative expression and original thought.
- Art-infused education: the program, objectives, and budget should have particular emphasis on integrating visual arts into professional development, enabling teachers to use art across the curriculum. Other art forms may also be integrated, but grant proposals without infusion of visual art are less likely to be funded.