• Public benefit: your project focuses on providing and improving access to arts, heritage, historic preservation, science, and technology educational experiences for K-12 public school students in King County. Your project makes clear efforts to prioritize program delivery for schools and students with less access to cultural education opportunities. Your project demonstrates support for the needs of the schools and school districts your students attend.
• Student learning connection: your project provides a learning experience that is culturally sustaining, student-centered, safe and supportive, enriching, and interactive. Your project provides clear learning outcomes aligned with and/or enhancing classroom learning through connections to WA State or local district learning standards for K-12 students. Curriculum connections could be through aligning your program to specific standards, or by sharing how your program adds to or enhances classroom learning. Project demonstrates ability to create unique heritage, science, historic preservation, or arts-centered engagements for youth and a commitment to continual program improvement.
• Qualifications: your work samples and experience demonstrate your ability to work with K-12 students and classes, and partner with public schools. Lead program staff can demonstrate at least 2 years of experience in youth education programs. Project demonstrates a commitment to student safety.
• Feasibility: your project budget and plan are realistic and achievable. The requested funding amount is appropriate for the project. If cultural education staff (including teaching artists or educators) are part of the project, the project demonstrates how cultural workers will be fairly compensated.

Advancing equity*: 4Culture’s mission focuses on racial equity and envisions a county where culture is essential and accessible to all. Your project specifically benefits historically marginalized communities, especially those disproportionately impacted by systemic racism (e.g. serving Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, engaging BIPOC leadership, etc). The project leaders speak from their own experiences or collaborate with members of these communities through the planning and development of their project. The project team have ensured project leadership, decision-making and community input reflect community voices of BIPOC and/or historically marginalized partner communities in King County. *This is not a requirement to receive funding.

Create: your project focuses on creating a new cultural education program or experience for K-12 students that addresses a cultural access need for students in one or more of King County’s 19 public school districts and tribal schools. Examples:

• Shoreline Poetry Garden created a new resource box program to bring their arts integration programming to more schools that couldn’t attend a field trip to their physical location. They used Curiosity Pass funds to support developing this curriculum, and securing the materials needed to create new resource boxes.

Grow: your project builds upon your existing education programming to expand and/or improve cultural access for public school students in King County. Examples:

• Pioneer Square History Museum grew their field trip and in-school residency programs to serve 25% more schools. They hired and trained new educators to deliver these programs. They also translated all their materials to be better accessible to multilingual students and families.

Continue: your project continues an existing program or set of programs that support public school students to access cultural learning programs and demonstrates value in repeating this work. Examples:

• The Octopus Outdoor Learning Network continued offering their signature beach investigation program and their summer sea camp in partnership with 20 schools across four school districts. Curiosity Pass funds supported salaries for program staff and allowed the organization to replace out-of-date instructional materials for students.

• Providing public school students with access to your creative work, project, or program for free or at a reduced rate.
• Providing educational programs and experiences at cultural organizations, schools, or other venues accessible to the public.
• Exploring ways to expand and broaden your work and activities for the education and entertainment of the public.
• Participating in collaborative relationships with other cultural organizations, individuals, and groups to extend the reach and impact of a project or program for the benefit of public schools and students
• Organizational or individual capacity-building projects or activities that provide meaningful public benefits not otherwise achievable.
• For cultural organizations: providing, through technological and other means, services or programs in locations other than an organization’s own facilities.

• You are based outside of the City of Seattle.
• You are located in one of Seattle’s Communities of Opportunity.
• OR your application scores highly on the Advancing Equity criteria.

• Please see our discipline eligibility page to see if your work aligns with one of our core funding disciplines of arts, science & technology, historic preservation, or heritage (https://www.4culture.org/discipline-eligibility/)
• If selected for an award, you must provide an Employer Identification Number (LLC, S-Corp, General Partnership, nonprofit, etc.). Your EIN must be registered under the same group name as your 4Culture account. We cannot accept proprietorships under personal names or Social Security Numbers.
• Fiscally sponsored groups and nonprofits are eligible but not required.
• A cultural education group is led by two or more people working together under a group name. If your project is led by one person, even if you are working with a team, please apply as an Individual.
• Groups may only submit one application per year. Multiple applicants may not apply for the same project.
• The following are not eligible to apply:
  • 2025 Curiosity Pass grant recipients.
  • Curiosity Pass grant recipients with incomplete contracts.
  • 2026 Curiosity Pass selection panelists.
• If you are using a fiscal sponsor to apply for this grant, you must have prior approval by 4Culture staff. You will need to indicate if you are applying with a Fiscal Sponsor in your application, and 4Culture will review both you and your fiscal sponsor’s eligibility to receive funding. Please review our Fiscal Sponsorship page.
• Have a mission that includes a focus on one of our disciplines: Arts, Heritage, Historic Preservation, or Science & Technology.
• Program lead staff have 2 years minimum experience developing and providing youth education programs for K-12 students. This can include classroom teaching, field trips, tours, workshops, artist residencies, etc. Experience partnering with public schools, a plus but not required.
• Partnerships between multiple, eligible groups are eligible, but only one of the partnering groups will apply on behalf of the partnership.

• Individuals must be at least 18 years old and a resident of King County when you apply through completion of your project.
• If selected for an award, you must provide a Social Security Number to receive payment. No fiscal sponsors may be used.
• You may only submit one application per year. Multiple applicants may not apply for the same project.
• Have experience in arts, heritage, historic preservation, or science & technology.
• Have 2 years minimum experience developing and providing youth education programs for K-12 students. This can include classroom teaching, field trips, tours, workshops, artist residencies, etc. Experience partnering with public schools, a plus but not required.
• The following are not eligible to apply:
  • Individual Science & Technology projects are not currently eligible
  • 4Culture staff, Board, or Arts Advisory Committee members.
  • 2025 Curiosity Pass grant recipients.
  • Curiosity Pass grant recipients with incomplete contracts.
  • Individuals applying on behalf of a current Sustained Support or Launch recipient organization. If you are staff at one of these organizations, please let us know in your application (search current awardees here).
  • 2026 Curiosity Pass selection panelists.

• In-school activities: workshops, residencies, performances, lectures, programs or other experiences that occur on a school’s campus. This could also include things like resource boxes/kits, or curriculum for teachers to use in their classrooms.
• Before- and after-school activities: programs or activities that occur before or after the usual school day and are often held on a school’s campus or at a central location such as a community center or at a cultural organization’s venue.
• Summer and school break activities: experiences, programs, and activities that occur outside of the normal school year, usually during summer, winter, mid-winter, or spring breaks. These programs can occur on or off school grounds and may serve public school students from multiple King County school districts.
• Field trips: off-site experiences usually occurring during the school day to augment classroom instruction. They are typically hosted at the venue of the cultural organization.
• Professional development: support services for public school educators or cultural organization staff to successfully complete proposed education projects.

• At least 51% of your program participants must attend one of the 19 King County public school districts or tribal schools.
• Applicants will be asked to demonstrate connection to public school communities.
• If awarded, a Letter of Support will be required from partnering schools, districts, or school community partners at the time of contracting.

• Education Program staff directly related to the project. These could include Program Coordinators, Managers, Directors, teaching artists, or cultural educators for example.
• Equipment/supplies: materials for direct use in your proposed cultural education program(s). Not general office supplies.
• Transportation subsidies for public school students and classes.
• Cost of student/school attendance
• Curriculum development: could include the cost of creating new curriculum, or curriculum resources like kits or boxes.
• Professional development: relevant capacity building for project personnel.
• Accessibility improvements to the program or program site.
• Interpretation or translation services
• Up to 15% of your project budget may include food and snacks for students. Ineligible: food and beverage for staff (paid or unpaid) or volunteers that are not part of the school partner served.

• This is a 1-year funding program.
• Your project, or a phase of a larger project, must take place between September 1, 2026 and December 31, 2027.
• The Curiosity Pass 2026 application opens on April 22, 2026, and closes on June 11, 2026. Applicants must submit their intent to apply by starting their application and by saving a draft on or before May 28, 2026 at 5:00 pm PST to allow 4Culture staff to complete an eligibility pre-screening. The link to start an application will close after this date.
• Contracting is estimated to begin in September, 2026.

• Individuals: individual teaching artists and cultural educators may submit a smaller project budget between $5,000 and $15,000.

• Programs where a more than 51% of participants do not attend King County public schools (examples not limited to: private schools, home schools)
• K-12 schools or school districts: funds cannot be directly paid to schools. Professional development for teachers/staff is eligible.
• Athletics, recreation, sport, or martial arts.
• Tuition and cost-of-living expenses for students in any degree program.
• Food and beverage for staff (paid or unpaid) or volunteers that are not part of the school partner being served. Food and snacks for students is an eligible expense.
• Purchase of non-program-related equipment.
• Religious worship, exercise, prayer, or instruction.
• Fundraising expenses.
• General operating support: funds can be used for program-specific operations. Otherwise consider applying for Sustained Support.
•  Capital expenditures including construction or renovation–consider apply for Building for Equity.

• A base award determined by the recipient organization’s project budget size.
• Additional awards for organizations that meet Geographic and Equity Investment criteria.
• Additional Merit funding for organizations that score well in the panel process.

• Returning: please make sure your profile is up to date. Profile must be up-to-date by the time of the application deadline to be eligible.
• New: you will need to create an account before you can access the application. Groups must create an organization account, which may take 1-2 days to be approved.

Demographic Information

Your profile in our application portal must provide demographic information for the current year for yourself (for individuals), or your board and staff (for groups). We use this information to help us understand how well we are doing in our efforts to reach all communities in King County. All information will be kept confidential and will not be used in funding decisions.

Project Budget

Use the budget form to share the planned expenses and revenues for the project. In the notes section, provide more detail on each category and how you would use the grant funds. Please refer to “What Curiosity Pass Funds” section above for eligible expenses for 4Culture funding. If your expenses include staff salaries, they must be dedicated to the proposed project. Please list the staff and/or their title and briefly describe their project role. Note: staff expenses are eligible if they are direct education staff, or staff that will be working directly with students in this project. Please see our Sustained Support program to learn about operational funding for other operational costs.

Venue

Complete this section if you know the name and address of the project’s venue or location. If you do not yet have a venue, please skip down to “Project Venue Notes”, and share the type of venue you would like to use and why. If you are planning to use more than one venue, indicate that in the Project Venue Notes as well. For this grant, it will be important for the selection panel to see which school communities you plan to partner with, even if they are just estimates or goals at this point.

Work Samples

You must submit samples of past work that best demonstrate your qualifications for your project. We recommend prioritizing your work samples by selecting the most relevant to your proposed project—in scope, scale, complexity, or subject matter. For the Curiosity Pass, we recommend sharing work samples such as program images or other media, lesson plans, instructional materials, etc. Eligible work samples include images, text documents, videos, and audio in the following formats:

• Attachments (images and documents): JPEG, PDF, or Word Document – files must be under 2 MB each
• Links (video and audio): YouTube, Vimeo, or Soundcloud – links must be public or unlisted (no password)

Work samples must be under 5 minutes or 5 pages total. For longer work samples, please note what section should be reviewed in the Work Sample Description. The following formats are not accepted and will not be reviewed:

• Links to social media, cloud storage, film databases, resumes/CVs, websites, or links requiring passwords.
• Attachments over 2MB each.
• Full resumes.

Work Sample Description

Please prepare the following information for all work samples:

• Titles of the work samples in the order in which they are to be reviewed.
• Date the works were completed or if they are in-progress.
• Your role (e.g. “I was the choreographer and director of this project.”).

Documents: note if the samples are complete works, abstracts, excerpts, or a collection. Images: share the medium, dimensions, and image credits. You may elect to write a few brief sentences about each work sample.