Founded in 2000 by Artists For a Work Free America and Vital 5 Productions, The Arbitrary Art Grants were designed to fortify the arts community, reinforce the ideology that all people are artists and stand as a catalyst to create large scale group performance. The grants stand as a testament that $500.00 can inspire a community to participate and create art without judgement or competition.

We believe that no institution or individual holds the capacity to objectively judge who should, and who should not recieve money to create art. We are all painters and writers, musicians and performers, and that through social conditioning we have been stripped of our natural desire to create and perform, and programmed to believe that art is for the gifted and privileged. If indeed all people are artists, and that the inherent nature of art is subjective; the current institutions dispursing public art grants are negative and isolating to the general art populus.

The Arbitrary Art Grants are a democratic example of the distribution of financial resources in an encouraging and supportive manner.