We currently have three open calls for: our 2026 Courtyard Project, our Program Committee, and Heat Aid. Read more below! Questions may be directed to info@materialsandapplications.org. We are a small team, and it’s the height of our busy summer season——so please extend some grace as responses may be slow.
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2026 Courtyard Project
M&A is seeking Letters of Interest (LOI) for our 2026 summer courtyard project in the M&A x Craft Contemporary Courtyard!
We are looking for proposals that are consistent with the history of M&A’s production, including works that can be understood as installations, environments, encounters, or otherwise temporary spaces, and that prompt critical thinking around urban life and reconsiderations of spatial conventions. Projects should be intellectually engaging and physically robust, exploring questions of tectonics, landscape, detailing, labor, and/or inhabitation.
The project will be activated by a series of experimental public programs that interrogate, expand on, and extend audience engagement with the work and its adjacent topics, to be envisioned in collaboration with M&A, Craft Contemporary, and the selected team. These programs include hands-on workshops, screenings, performances, concerts, and dialogues. In keeping with our history, the exhibition and programs will be free and open to the public.
We are seeking letters from emerging design teams and practices. We are interested to learn about the projects or research your office has developed that may result in new work to be exhibited. As an organization, we are committed to broadening the diversity of voices we hear from in art and architecture across institutional, academic, and practice spaces, and encountering and working against disciplinary boundaries and biases.
Some specifics about this cycle:
This project is part of the M&A x Craft Contemporary partnership, an institutional collaboration that has supported M&A-produced projects in Craft Contemporary’s Courtyard (Veil Craft, Black – Still, We Carry the Land, Light Gauge). Craft Contemporary’s curatorial theme for Summer 2026 is “Earth.” M&A’s project should take this theme into account.
As a small, volunteer-driven organization, an ethos that prioritizes low costs, high impact, and knowledge/skill-sharing has been consistent in our work from day one. This is especially crucial at this time as the grant programs we rely on are being terminated and gutted. We are eager to read proposals that take this context into account, whether through a circular engagement with materials, the integration of community/collective building methods, etc.
We ask that the LOI be contained to 2-3 pages that 1) articulate your practice and 2) describe a project idea for the courtyard. We welcome a sketch and the attachment of a portfolio/links, yet generally discourage too much labor on your part during this first stage. A shortlist of three practices will be invited to participate in a second, stipended stage of this proposal process held in late August 2025.
More information about the project site, funding, and schedule can be found here.
If interested, please submit your LOI by August 18, 2025 via this form:
Program Committee
We are seeking new members for our Program Committee!
The M&A Program Committee is a cooperative volunteer body oriented around projects, programs, and organizational support. The committee, in collaboration with M&A staff, establishes curatorial thematics and works collectively to envision, organize, and produce distinct elements of M&A programming such as public events, lectures, performances, and parties. The Program Committee operates as a whole as well as separately in smaller working groups to focus on specific areas of curatorial and program organizing work. These working groups comprise people with all levels of responsibility within M&A, including volunteers, members, staff, and the Board of Directors.
Collectively-determined projects are supported by an annual allocation and may receive additional funding through grants and sponsorships.
Working groups vary in their durations and meeting schedules–some may be seasonal and others project-by-project. Each group consists of one or two leads and any number of members, volunteers, and staff.
Program Committee can organize any event that lasts 1-5 hours in any format, including but not limited to: a workshop, screening, installation, sound, dance, reading, performance, speaker series, etc.
M&A programs are intellectually rigorous, thoughtful, and engaging around architecture as a widely defined discipline. We do not produce programs that take on a tone of promotion or commercialism. We aim to center programs that question and invite engaging dialogues, diverse experiences, and/or experimental formats.
Entering the second year of our Program Committee, we are looking for new members from diverse backgrounds interested in collaboratively developing programs with M&A. In addition to public programming and architectural engagement, we welcome people skilled in capabilities we are seeking to build, such as editing, community engagement, and publicity/marketing.
More information is available here.
Applications to join the M&A Program Committee are due by September 21, 11:59pm.
Please apply via the form below:
Heat Aid
Heat Aid is an ongoing call for material support of Echo Park Mutual Aid, SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, and Water Drop LA, mutual aid organizations in our community that redistribute basic resources to our unhoused neighbors.
We are always collecting:
Tents and tarps
Sleeping bags
Clothing (casual and adult-sized)*
Adult socks, shoes, and sandals *
Cooling towels
Sun hats and baseball caps
Sunglasses
Travel size sunscreen
Coolers
Liquid IV (and other electrolytes)
* Used items should be like-new, in a condition that you’d give to a friend.
You can donate during all M&A programs or arrange a drop off by emailing info@materialsandapplications.org