Discipline Definitions

Architecture/Environmental Design

This category includes the creation of places, spaces, constructions, and landscapes; traditional and experimental forms of architecture (built or unbuilt); functional art and design structures; and work made for hire. It also welcomes cross-disciplinary works that integrate engineering, technology, and urban planning. NYFA recognizes that architecture is typically a collaborative process, but applicants should only submit work for which they are able to demonstrate they played the primary design role.

Choreography

This category accepts work where choreography, organized movement, or embodied performance is a central element. It welcomes work in all choreographic styles, including but not limited to: contemporary, ballet, hip-hop and street styles, tap, traditional and cultural dance forms, circus, improvisation-based work, and multi-genre or interdisciplinary performances where movement is primary.

Crafts/Sculpture

This category accepts work in all forms of craft, including ceramics, glass, wood, metal, fiber, textiles, jewelry, and mixed media. This category accepts work in all forms of sculpture, including kinetic works and installations. Work-for-hire or mass-produced works are not eligible for this category.

Digital/Electronic Arts

This category accepts work in which technology is an essential element of the work’s creation, presentation, or understanding. Examples include: works created or displayed on computers or other electronic media; work created with computer models such as sculptural works or algorithmic art; interactive installations including immersive virtual environments; internet projects; hypertext documents; other image, text, audio, or video works rooted in technology. This category also includes work that critically engages with artificial intelligence (AI).

Fiction

This category accepts work in all varieties and genres of prose fiction, including novels, short stories, and experimental forms. Work in graphic or comic book fiction, as well as work created for story-driven video games, are also accepted in this category.

Folk/Traditional Arts

This category accepts works of traditional folk art and creative, cultural expressions. Folk/Traditional Arts is rooted in tradition and long-standing practices passed down through generations within ethnic, regional, occupational, religious, and other identity-based communities. Artistic forms can include: performing traditions in music, dance, and drama; traditional storytelling and other verbal arts; festivals or community-based art; traditional crafts, visual arts, architecture; the adornment and transformation of the built environment; and other kinds of material folk culture. This category does not include work that involves choreography, theatricalization, or stylization that significantly alters traditional forms or practices.

Interdisciplinary Work

This category accepts submissions of works that integrate knowledge and methods from multiple disciplines into a single piece or body of work. These works may draw from, but are not limited to, visual arts, performance, social practice, architecture, design, technology, science, sound, and engineering. Examples include, but are not limited to: participatory installations or environments, socially engaged or activist works, live or durational art, public interventions, performance-based media, and time-based projects. Works that rely solely on conventional practices in theater, dance, literature, or visual art without cross-disciplinary integration are not eligible for this category. 

Please note: Live performances must be submitted as documentation, as in-person attendance is not possible.

Music/Sound

This category accepts submissions from composers and sound artists working in any and all styles of music including all genres of vocal, instrumental, and electronic music, soundscapes, field recordings, and other experimental forms.

Nonfiction Literature

This category accepts work in all varieties and genres of nonfiction literary prose, including essays, criticism, journalism, autobiography, monographs, memoir, creative non-fiction, and experimental forms.

Painting

This category accepts work that involves painting of any kind upon any surface. However, artists who make engravings, etchings, lithographs, prints, serigraphs, woodcuts, and drawings should apply in the Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts category—not Painting.

Photography

This category accepts work in traditional and experimental photography including light-based work, alternative processes, or any work in which photography or photographic techniques are pivotal, if not exclusive.

Playwriting/Screenwriting

This category accepts work in the writing of stageplays, screenplays, teleplays, libretti, radioplays, audiodramas, puppet plays, and experimental web series. While librettists may apply in this category, audiotapes are not accepted in this category.

Poetry

This category accepts original work in all forms of poetry, for either the page, the stage, or lyrics for a music composition.

Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts

This category includes work in visual media other than painting, including artist’s books, aquatints, collages, engravings, etchings, lithographs, monotypes, prints, serigraphs, woodcuts, cut paper, and drawings. Artists whose work involves painting only, including watercolorists, should apply to the Painting category. Artists whose work involves the computer as primary medium should apply in the Digital/Electronic Arts category.

Video/Film

This category accepts work in video or any work in which video or video techniques are pivotal, if not exclusive. Works initially shot on film cameras are also eligible, as well as filmed material that has been transferred to the computer for editing and processing.

Please note: Work created primarily for commercial distribution or produced under “work-for-hire” contracts are not eligible for this category.