Canada Council Micro-grants: what the form actually asks for

Micro-grants is the Canada Council program for the small, specific ask: getting to a market or a festival, developing your network, making your work reachable by Deaf and disabled audiences. Up to $10,000, and a shorter form than the bigger programs.

Shorter is not the same as short. Here is every step of it, in the order the portal's left navigation presents them, from a walkthrough of the live form on July 3, 2026, re-walked on August 3, 2026.

The steps, in order

1. Basic information
2. Travel
3. Activity description
4. Feasibility
5. Activity timeline
6. Budget
7. Last details
8. Support material

The portal adds a Declaration step, which is a sign-off rather than a question.

If you have applied to Explore and Create, note what is not here. There is no respectful and ethical practices block, which is four separate 1,700 character questions on Artistic Creation. Micro-grants instead has two steps Artistic Creation does not: a dedicated Travel step, and Feasibility.

Step by step

1. Basic information

Application name, capped at 80 characters. One-sentence summary, capped at 255 characters, which is about 40 words, so they do mean one sentence. Then your artistic practice, the activity type, and start and end dates.

Activity type is a fixed list and the portal offers three choices:

• Increasing accessibility for audiences, artists and/or arts workers who are Deaf or have disabilities
• Market and network development
• Participation in a presentation or exhibition opportunity

This is the step where eligibility quietly gets decided. If your project does not sit inside one of those three, the form will still let you fill it in.

2. Travel

First a yes or no: does your project include travel. If yes, you name a destination (Canada, or outside Canada) and then add a trip. Each trip carries its own estimated departure and return dates, where you are travelling from and to, and:

Field	Limit
Specify the location, if not listed	80 characters
Name of event, if applicable	100 characters
Name of travellers and their role	1,300 characters

The travelling-from and travelling-to fields themselves carry no cap we could confirm on the live form.

The trip's activity is a separate list of four, and this one does include career or artistic development and acquiring knowledge, even though the Basic information list above does not. Two lists, two different sets of options, one form. It is the single most confusing thing on this application.

3. Activity description

One box, 7,000 characters, for your proposed activities. This is the largest field on the form by a factor of two, and it is where the application is won or lost.

4. Feasibility

Capacity and experience, 1,700 characters. Roughly 250 to 280 words to argue that you can actually do the thing you just described. Feasibility is also one of the two things they score you on, so this box is worth more than its size suggests.

5. Activity timeline

3,500 characters. The portal asks what your project timeline is and to provide important milestones. Two questions, one box. Answer both.

6. Budget

A full revenue and expense table, not a single number. Four revenue groups, five expense groups, and a Notes field on every line capped at 500 characters. The lines are laid out in the budget guide.

Worth knowing: the portal does not enforce the $10,000 cap. There is no field maximum and no total maximum on the budget step. Nothing stops you submitting a request for $40,000 to a program that funds up to $10,000. The form will take it. The assessment will not.

7. Last details

1,700 characters, and the portal is unusually direct about what this box is for. It asks whether there is other information that will help them understand your application, and then tells you not to use the space to provide additional information related to earlier questions.

Read that twice. It is not a spillover box for the paragraph that would not fit in Activity description. Using it as one reads as not having followed the instructions, on the last question they see.

8. Support material

Sample descriptions cap at 255 characters each. Unlike Artistic Creation, Micro-grants treats support material as "as applicable" rather than a required CV and work-sample block, so there is no fixed list of documents you must attach. Formats and size limits are in what support material Canada Council accepts.

What they score

Two criteria, weighted:

Criterion	Weight
Relevance and impact	60
Feasibility	40

The portal shows pass/fail gating rather than a published score cutoff, so there is no public number to aim at. The useful takeaway is the ratio: relevance is worth more than feasibility, and feasibility is still worth 40 percent of your result. A brilliant project you cannot evidently deliver loses almost half the marks before anyone argues about taste.

A note on where this came from

Every label, limit and option above was read off the live applicant portal rather than off the program's preview document. The last full walk was August 3, 2026. Canada Council revises these forms, so if something here and the portal disagree, the portal is right and this page is the bug.