Since its inception, Grand Point North has sought to be more than a music festival. Founded by Grace Potter on the shores of Lake Champlain, it has grown into an interdisciplinary, immersive, and accessible celebration where music intersects with visual art, culinary experiences, movement, performance, and community. Throughout the festival grounds, audiences encounter carefully curated food vendors, pop-up performances, dancers weaving through the landscape, and temporary art installations that transform familiar places into moments of surprise and discovery. In many ways, this reflects how artists and culture makers themselves work: moving fluidly across disciplines, building connections between ideas, people, materials, and experiences. For this year's visual art program, we invite artists with roots in Vermont—or meaningful connections to the Green Mountains—to propose temporary immersive artworks that transform the Burlington waterfront into a landscape of wonder.
Networks in the Air
Music creates invisible architecture. A song moves through the air, gathering strangers into a community. It creates relationships that cannot be seen, only felt. This year's visual art program asks artists to make those invisible connections visible.We invite proposals that explore networks, webs, weaving, mesh, projection, suspension, communication, ecology, interdependence, and the unseen structures that hold people—and places—together. We are especially interested in works that activate the air itself: installations that float, flutter, sway, drift, shimmer, glow, project, suspend, or transform with light, wind, movement, and water. Think expansively about the festival landscape.
Could a work float among the trees?
Could it drift across Lake Champlain?
Could it be suspended from stage structures or architectural elements?
Could projection transform an overlooked surface into a temporary monument?Could an artwork invite thousands of people to look upward together?
Could it create a portal, a gathering place, a constellation, or a shared dream?
Rather than static objects, we are seeking experiences—artworks that alter perception, encourage participation, and create moments of wonder and suspension of disbelief. At a moment when so many forces pull us apart, we are interested in projects that remind us of the invisible threads connecting us: to one another, to the landscape, to memory, to music, and to the creative communities that sustain us .We welcome ambitious ideas. We welcome experimental ideas. We welcome proposals that are playful, poetic, technically inventive, or deeply rooted in community. Above all, we seek projects that are visually compelling, thoughtfully conceived, and achievable within the realities of an outdoor festival environment. Help us transform the Burlington waterfront into a place where the impossible feels, if only for a weekend, entirely possible.
Project Support
Selected artists will receive: an all-inclusive project honorarium of $3,000
Festival admission passes
Coordination with Grand Point North staff regarding installation logistics
The opportunity to present work to thousands of festival attendees on Burlington's waterfront
Artists are responsible for fabrication, transportation, installation, and deinstallation of their projects.
Eligibility
Applicants must either:
Reside in Vermont, or demonstrate a meaningful connection to Vermont and the Green Mountain region.
Artists, collaborative teams, designers, architects, fabricators, performers, landscape designers, and interdisciplinary practitioners are encouraged to apply.
Submission Requirements
Please submit:
A current résumé or CV
Three to five examples of previous work
A cover letter describing:
Your proposed project
Why it is a good fit for Grand Point North.
How you intend to realize it and any technical installation requirements (electrical or otherwise)
Sketches, renderings, diagrams, or rough drawings. Formal renderings are not required—we're just as happy to receive ideas sketched on the back of a napkin if they communicate your vision.
Selection Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated based on:
Artistic excellence
Originality
Relevance to the curatorial theme
Feasibility within budget, logistics and timeline
Public engagement
Suitability for an outdoor waterfront environment
Timeline
Application Deadline: July 31, 2026
Selected artists will be notified shortly thereafter.
Festival dates: September 18-20 2026 on Burlington's waterfront.
About Grand Point North
Grand Point North is an annual music festival founded by Grace Potter on the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. Bringing together world-class musicians alongside emerging voices, the festival celebrates creativity across disciplines while remaining deeply rooted in the artistic spirit of Vermont. 100% of the proceeds of Grand Point North will support Grand Point Foundation. We believe music doesn't simply fill a place—it transforms it. Help us imagine what else is possible.
Please send submissions here.