Grant Lab #4: Positioning
Part of a five-part Grant Lab series.
🌊 How to locate your work without shrinking it.
There’s a moment in almost every grant application where the project is clear, the urgency is there—and something still isn’t landing.
The work is strong.
But the application doesn’t tell the reader where to place it.
So it floats.
And work that floats is hard to fund.
The real problem
Juries don’t just evaluate quality.
They evaluate context.
They are asking, whether explicitly or not:
What field is this in?
What conversation is it entering?
Why is this artist positioned to do this work?
If those answers aren’t clear, the project can feel unanchored—even if it’s excellent.
🔍 Where artists get stuck
Positioning can feel dangerous.
Because it can sound like:
branding
reducing your work to a label
So many artists either:
1. Avoid it completely
→ “I don’t want to box the work in.”
2. Overgeneralize
→ “This work exists at the intersection of identity, language and place.”
(which, again, could describe hundreds of projects — including my own! )
What positioning actually is
Positioning is not labeling.
It’s locating.
It’s showing:
what your work is in conversation with
what it extends or disrupts
how it sits within (or against) existing frameworks
You are not shrinking the work.
You are giving the reader coordinates.
What this looks like in practice
❌ Unpositioned
This is a poetry manuscript exploring language and identity.
→ clear enough
→ completely unplaced
❌ Overgeneralized
This work sits at the intersection of multilingualism and diaspora.
→ sounds good
→ still vague
✅ Positioned
This project builds on contemporary hybrid poetics while challenging dominant bilingual frameworks by centering linguistic forms that move outside standardized language systems.
Now we have:
a field (“hybrid poetics”)
a tension (“challenging dominant frameworks”)
a direction (“centering forms outside standardized systems”)
🎯 The three anchors of positioning
When positioning is working, three things are visible:
1. Lineage
What traditions, movements or practices does this relate to?
(Not name-dropping—orientation.)
2. Intervention
What is the work doing differently?
Where is it pushing, disrupting or extending?
3. Authority
Why are you positioned to do this?
Not in a resume way—but in a relationship-to-the-work kind of way.
⚠️ The authority problem (this is where people hesitate)
A lot of artists undersell here.
They either:
list credentials flatly
or avoid naming their authority altogether
But juries are asking:
Why this artist for this project?
And “because I care about it” is not enough.
Authority can look like:
lived experience
sustained engagement
community connection
formal experimentation over time
It’s not ego.
It’s alignment.
🧠 The reframe
This was one lesson that was hard for me to learn. I had a mental block, because I thought I had to explain why I was the only person who could do the work.
In fact, you’re not claiming to be the only person who could do this work.
You’re showing that you are deeply positioned within it.
🛠️ What to ask yourself
Instead of:
How do I describe this project?
Ask:
What work does this sit beside—or push against?
What space does it enter that is currently under-defined?
What is my relationship to this space?
What assumptions does this project challenge — culturally, linguistically or politically?
What does this project make newly visible, legible or possible?
The answers to these questions create position.
🎯 What this changes
A well-positioned project doesn’t feel like:
one of many strong submissions
It feels like:
a specific contribution in a specific space, by someone clearly inside that work
And that is much easier to fund.
A helpful distinction
This is the lab where a lot of applications quietly succeed or stall.
Because two projects can be equally strong—
but the one that feels situated, intentional, rigorous and aligned
is the one a jury can stand behind in a discussion.The strongest applications are built with these questions in mind.
In summary
Clarity makes your work understandable.
Urgency makes it necessary.
Positioning makes it placeable.
And work that can be placed
can be advocated for.
As always, thank you for reading.
🌊 Next in the Grant Lab: Scale & Feasibility — how to make ambitious projects feel do-able without shrinking them.
Applications for the Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund remain open until June 1, 2026.
With love and intention,
Cara
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