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STARS Guidelines Available for 2022-23 School Year

Diane Daily, Program Manager

photo of a dress rehearsal - 10 drummers spread over many levels of staging and one singer being directed by a teaching artist
Luis Salgado choreographing “Ti Moune’s Dance” in Once on This Island in workshop for cast, family, and friends in March 2022. R.evolucion Latina residency with Lawrence High School. Photo: ASA Photographic.

Mass Cultural Council has published the STARS Residencies program guidelines for the 2022-2023 school year.

STARS Residencies support creative learning residencies of 3 days or more at Massachusetts K-12 schools in the arts, sciences, and humanities with teaching artists, scientists, or humanists. Any Massachusetts school serving grades K-12 is eligible to host one residency per school year.

Mass Cultural Council has made important changes to the FY23 STARS Residencies program as part of our commitment to equity, access, and inclusion across all programs. Starting this year:

  • Cultural Partners can now apply! For the sake of greater access, cultural sector individuals, such as teaching artists/scientists/humanists or nonprofit organizations can now apply directly for STARS funding. This means that grant funds would be paid to the individual cultural partner or the nonprofit organization. NOTE: All applications must have a school partner to be eligible.
  • We have increased the minimum grant amount from $700 to $2,500. We’ve made this change in recognition of the time and work required to prepare an application.
  • To improve equity, we will prioritize applications from:
    • First-time applicants or applicants that have not received funding from Mass Cultural Council in the last three fiscal years. Read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to learn more.
    • Schools that are located in cities and towns that are below the state’s median household income and below statewide educational attainment (the percentage of adults who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree). A full list of these under-resourced communities is available.
    • Schools with student populations that are 50% or more Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC) as reported by DESE. (Data Source (2021-2022.) Look up your school online.
    • In order to ensure that as many applicants as possible can receive funding, if necessary, we may further prioritize applicants not receiving other FY23 Mass Cultural Council funding and/or we may prioritize applicants that submitted only one STARS application.

As always, schools may be involved in only one STARS application per school year, regardless of who is the applicant. If two applications are submitted involving the same school, the school principal will be contacted and asked to identify the one application the school will support.

The FY23 STARS Residencies online application will be available on September 28, 2022. The application deadline is October 25, 2022 at 11:59pm (ET). To access the application, you must be registered in Mass Cultural Council’s online grants management system.

For more information, review the program guidelines and FAQs.  You can also attend the online information session on October 3 from 5-6pm (a recording will be available afterward on the program guidelines page) or contact Program Manager Diane Daily at 617-858-2709.


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