Access/VSA Emerging Young Artists Tips for 2025 Applications

Artists with disabilities are invited to submit artwork that demonstrates excellence and their individual perspectives from the experience of disability. Artists must be ages 16-25 and reside in the United States. Applications for the 2025 program are now open. The 2025 theme is Catalyst. We ask artists to explore how their artistic identity interacts with their disability identity to spark something new. 

Applications for the 2025 program are due by February 28, 2025. Apply now!

Social Security Resources

Work Incentives Planning & Assistance (WIPA): Programs to provide free benefits counseling to people who receive SSI and/or SSDI beneficiaries to help you make informed choices about work. WIPAs provide information and referral services related to work incentives. Find your local WIPA at https://choosework.ssa.gov/findhelp/

Michelle Miles may have just graduated from college in May, but her career in the arts is already off to a bright start. Miles was recognized with the Grand Prize for the 2019-2020 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program. Her work hand model will be featured in the exhibition Connected, which will tour the United States over the coming year. Here, Miles offers insight into her artistic practice, her experience with the Emerging Young Artists Program, and what emerging artists with disabilities can do to support one another.

Since 2002, the Kennedy Center and Volkswagen Group of America have presented the VSA Emerging Young Artists Program to recognize and showcase the work of emerging young artists living with disabilities, ages 16-25, who are currently residing in the United States. Connected, the 18^th exhibition presented as part of the VSA Emerging Young Artists Program, gives 15 young artists the opportunity to display their work in venues across the United States where each artist’s individual talent, mode of expression, and view of the world is showcased and valued.

This year’s theme asks artists to connect, to span new distances, and to see unexpected relationships. When is connection, or disconnection, most needed? What roads lead us there? Overlapping stories and interrelated ideas can overwhelm or can create important new discoveries. These artworks resonate deeply and spark greater understanding of our connected lives.