South Arts Arts Journalism Grants: Travel category
South Arts offers a separate $1,000 Travel Grant category within its 2026–2027 Arts Journalism Grants pilot. This is competitive financial assistance to individual journalists or journalism organizations for specific reporting trips that produce publicly accessible journalism about Southern arts and culture; it is not a tourism promotion contract, artist performance grant, or ordinary vendor procurement.
Individual applicant award
$1,000 per Travel Grant applicant. The $5,000 Individual Journalist and $10,000 Journalism Organization categories are separate. An applicant may submit only one application in one category. No aggregate Travel Grant pool is separately published. No cost-sharing contribution is specified by South Arts.
Who and where
Eligible applicants include a journalist based in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee traveling within the South for an arts reporting assignment; a journalist from one of those states traveling elsewhere to cover a Southern artist, arts organization, or cultural event; and a journalist based elsewhere in the United States traveling to the South to report on Southern arts or culture. A journalism organization can also submit a Travel proposal for its staff or freelance journalist. Travel must be necessary for in-person observation, interviews or research and yield publicly available journalistic work. The broader out-of-region option applies to this Travel category only.
Allowable and excluded uses
Eligible travel expenses include airfare, train travel, mileage, local ground transport, lodging, and meals directly related to reporting. Applications must document the proposed story, clear reporting purpose, feasible travel logistics, work product and public distribution. The funder excludes promotional tourism, advertising, sponsored content, PR, institutional marketing, academic coursework, tuition, arts production, political advocacy and other non-journalistic activity.
Deadlines and required materials
Application deadline: November 20, 2026, 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), through South Arts’ official Salesforce grants portal. Applications opened October 2. Travel category materials include applicant website/portfolio, short (250-word) and long (500-word) biographies, description of reporting trip (750 words), publication and impact plan (500 words), travel budget and logistics narrative (500 words plus budget), and up to 25 pages or 30 minutes of samples showing capacity to carry out the project. Applicants must choose this category rather than apply separately for another track.
Disbursement and reporting
South Arts pays 75% after agreement and project start, with 25% after acceptance of the final report due June 30, 2027. Award notification timing differs between the official program summary and FAQ (late December 2026 versus January 2027); these are not applicant submission deadlines.
Controlling South Arts program and track guidelines | Official eligibility and application FAQ | Official application portal. Verified November 5, 2026. The applicant-session-dependent Salesforce form could not be independently inspected; the public detailed guidelines control this summary.