The Ursa Major Fund is a project award program administered by Bunnell Street Arts Center, an institution embedded in Alaska's cultural landscape. It is designed to support the independent, self-organized work of artists, small groups, and collaborators across the state. Ten grants of $6,000 each are available for artist-led, risk-taking, public-facing projects that inspire curiosity, engagement, dialogue, and respect for cultural integrity. The program does not require a fee to apply, and its scope is deliberately broad: projects must begin from a visual arts impulse, interpreted generously and with wide latitude. Crucially, the fund is intended to help artists enact their creative visions, not to accomplish social, political, cultural, or other instrumental goals. This distinction matters. The jury will be looking for proposals that are driven by artistic inquiry rather than by predetermined outcomes or advocacy. The program is open to artists who call Alaska home, and projects must primarily occur in Alaska. The application window runs from September 1 to October 15 each year, with the deadline for the 2027 project awards falling on October 16, 2026. Awardees are notified by December 31, and projects take place during the following year, with a simple report due at the end. What artists receive is both material and procedural: a $6,000 grant, the institutional affiliation of Bunnell Street Arts Center, and the expectation of a public-facing outcome. The curatorial vision is one of risk and self-determination, favoring projects that might not find support elsewhere because they resist easy categorization or measurable impact. The fund respects cultural integrity and encourages dialogue, but it does not prescribe themes. Instead, it asks artists to define their own terms within a visual arts framework.