The 2023 winning proposals of Michigan State University’s CREATE! Micro-Grant Program represent a variety of disciplines and mediums. Each of the 13 proposals, submitted by MSU students from a range of undergraduate majors, received $500 to be used toward the creation of the proposed projects. The goal is to critically engage, through art, with the challenges and triumphs of our contemporary moment.

Offered by MSU’s College of Arts & Letters and facilitated by the Dean’s Arts Advisory Council (DAAC), Divya Victor, Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Transnational Poetry, and Rob Roznowski, Professor of Theatre, founded the program at the height of the pandemic in 2020. 

“Unlike most awards given to students at MSU, the CREATE! Micro-Grant Program’s initiative invests in the pure potential of a student’s vision rather than on the end product,” Victor said. “We wanted to offer a source of financial support that sent a clear message to our students: that process matters, that trying matters, that there is room for attempts that fail. We want our students to know that we believe in that because, as artists and writers in the DAAC, we have lived that truth.”

With support from across the university, dozens of students have had the opportunity to contribute to the many voices responding to current events and issues through creative mediums such as art, dance, film, poetry, and song.

“Thanks to our partner across the mission and the MSU Federal Credit Union, we hope that the DAAC will continue this initiative for as long as students feel the burden of the global pandemic on their training, their fields, and their work,” Victor said. “MSU’s responsibility to serve the artists we are educating should extend beyond the classroom, and I hope the CREATE! Micro-Grant Program can evolve into being a partner for students to express this need to the administration.”

This online exhibit was designed and curated collaboratively by Cameryn Hatfield (BS, Experience Architecture), Alexis Black (THR) and Pete Johnston (FLM). The organizers are grateful to Divya Victor, Rob Roznowski, Dan Trego, Kim Popiolek, and CAL Marketing and Communications for their supporting roles in this effort.