Designing and Implementing an Intersectional Grant Equity System

May 1

1. Context & Structural Challenge

The ArtistsInspire Grants (AIG) program, administered by ELAN Quebec, distributes significant funding to support youth-focused creative and educational initiatives across the province. However, historical data revealed a persistent systemic imbalance: funding disproportionately favored well-resourced urban centers, while schools and youth groups in regional, rural, Indigenous, Black, and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities faced significant barriers to entry.

The primary obstacles identified were twofold: an overly complex, time-consuming application process (averaging 2.5 hours per submission) and a lack of evaluative frameworks capable of recognising intersectional socioeconomic and geographic disadvantages.

2. Strategic Objectives

Systemic Redesign: Establish a data-driven Grant Equity System that explicitly prioritises funding for Indigenous, Black, racialised, and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth demographics.
Administrative De-escalation: Radically reduce the administrative burden on applicants to improve accessibility for understaffed or under-resourced institutions.
Geographic Democratisation: Execute a targeted outreach strategy to reactivate participation in historically underserved regions of Quebec.

3. Methodology & Implementation

Phase 1: Province-Wide Stakeholder Consultation

Rather than adopting a top-down policy approach, the Project Manager initiated a comprehensive, province-wide consultation process. This involved structured dialogue with public school administrators, regional arts consultants, community workers, and independent artists representing marginalised groups. The qualitative data gathered from these sessions informed the structural parameters of the new equity grid.

Phase 2: Technical Platform Overhaul & Automation

To eliminate the administrative friction that disproportionately penalized marginalised applicants, the entire grant application interface was re-engineered.

By implementing an automated, user-centric backend system, the submission pipeline was streamlined.
This optimisation reduced the time required to complete a grant application from 2.5 hours to 7 minutes, representing a 95% reduction in administrative processing time for applicants.

Phase 3: Intersectional Priority Grid

The core innovation was the development of an evaluative matrix grounded in intersectional analysis. Instead of assessing applications in a demographic vacuum, the grid weighed compounding factors, such as:

Geographic isolation (rural vs. urban accessibility).
Community-specific realities (e.g., linguistic minorities, socioeconomic vulnerability).
Targeted representation for 2SLGBTQIA+, Black, and Indigenous artists and youth populations.

Phase 4: Targeted Regional Pilot Deployment

To validate the system, a strategic pilot was launched targeting 26 schools out of a broader network, focusing exclusively on regional and Indigenous communities.

4. Quantifiable Outcomes & Impact

For the first time in seven fiscal years, the program successfully allocated 100% of its $560,000 funding envelope.
The automated application system handled unprecedentedly high volumes of submissions while maintaining a 94.67% approval rate, demonstrating that simplifying access does not compromise project quality.
The successful deployment of the regional pilot created a repeatable model for how provincial funding bodies can actively dismantle barriers to inclusion through thoughtful administrative and technological reform.

Quinten Sheriff