CBAA Community Steward Award

2025 Call for Nominations: Community Steward Award 

CBAA’s mission is to support and promote academic book arts education by fostering the development of its practice, teaching, scholarship and criticism. The CBAA Career Awards seek to recognize individuals whose accomplishments continue to have a significant impact on the teaching and study of book art.

The Community Steward Award is granted to an individual who is doing important work to support and care for the book arts community and making book arts more accessible to all. This work might include, but is not limited to:

• making book arts more accessible and inclusive by supporting the work of artists and educators who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and/or as people with disabilities.
• making book arts more economically accessible through grants, residencies, commissions, purchases, promotion, etc.
• making book arts more democratic and diverse by supporting or building local book arts organizations for artists, educators, and the general public.
• promoting book arts to the wider worlds of art, design, craft, and books.
• curating exhibitions of book arts and/or writing critical essays about work in the field outside of academic institutions and publications.
• supporting the field through maintenance, repair, rescue, management, sharing, and/or stewardship of book arts equipment, materials, and/or technical knowledge.

Nominations will be accepted through March 1, 2025.

Eligibility

• Nomination must be made by a CBAA member.
• An individual may self-nominate, but the required nomination materials are the same for self-nominations.
• Nominees do not need to be current members of CBAA (unless they are self-nominating).
• Nonprofit workers, administrators, or volunteers; business owners or employees; entrepreneurs, activists, organizers, publishers, community educators, artists, and/or anyone working outside of academic institutions to support the book arts community are eligible for this award. Nominees may have an academic affiliation, but this award is for work that occurs outside of an academic context.
• Nominees must be individuals or collaborative groups. Organizations are not eligible.
• Current members of the CBAA Board or the Awards Committee are not eligible for consideration.

To Nominate:

Visit https://cbaaregional.submittable.com/submit to submit a Nomination Form by the deadline of March 1, 2025.

Proceedure:

• Required materials provided by the nominator (deadline March 1, 2025):
• Nomination statement explaining why you are nominating this person for the CBAA Community Steward Award. Cite specific examples of their contributions to the field.
• Two letters from professional colleagues and/or members of the book arts community (broadly interpreted)

Award Determinations & Deadlines:

Award determinations will be made by the CBAA Board and announced in April 2025, prior to the Biennial Conference in Madison, WI.

• Award Amount: $1,000 honorarium; travel to, lodging at, and registration for the CBAA Biennial Conference; 5-year membership to CBAA.

CONTACT: Please email awards@collegebookart.org with questions about eligibility or the application and evaluation processes.

PDF Call for Nominations

Nomination Deadline: March 1, 2025