Program Basics
The Advocates program is a diversity and inclusion endeavor from Adobe Stock. The mission of the program is to identify, support, and promote outstanding artists identifying or allied with underrepresented communities, and create visual content that is honest, contemporary, and inclusive.
The Advocates program will launch with 3 sub-programs:
- Artist Development Fund - 40 Artists awarded yearly. Fund awarded to self-identifying artists from underrepresented communities for commissioned creative works
- D&I Social Community Leaders from underrepresented communities – Adobe Stock will work with social community leaders in their respective area to amplify voices and support our D&I artists
- Artist showcase – Showcasing underrepresented communities’ stock content and artists’ stories across Adobe’s communication channels
Examples of underrepresented communities we will champion include:
Black, Hispanic & Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, Female, Disability, Age, Veteran, Religion, Body & Skin Type
We created the Artist Development Fund to provide meaningful financial support to help artists overcome barriers to mounting creative productions to accelerate creation and delivery of content from underrepresented communities.
The funding is aimed to help artists overcome barriers to creative productions, such as equipment purchase or rentals, venue rentals, hiring models, obtaining props, costumes, makeup, research costs, and more.
The fund offers empowerment of artists’ own voices, and financial support for talented artists with eventual impact of promoting imagery that has been historically underrepresented in commercial media. The fund also ensures artists are compensated for their work.
Here are some details about the program:
40 selected artists from self-identifying communities will each receive a flat fee of $7,500.
We will commission photos, vectors/illustrations, or video assets from each artist
200 video assets, or 375 photo, vector, or illustration assets, or 250 mixed assets (images and video) will be delivered by selected artists
Creative expectations: Content is authentic, empowering, contemporary, and inclusive
To apply, you must be an Adobe Stock Contributor. If you don’t have an account yet, please join here. Additional Artist Development Fund selection criteria includes:
1. Artists’ current portfolio and aesthetic sensibility
2. Authenticity
3. Technical ability, specialty, and expertise
Learn more on the Artist Development Fund website.
We aim to offer a powerful platform for outstanding new voices and visuals.
As part of Adobe’s long-term commitment to inclusion and creativity for all, we will continue to work on vast systemic programs but recognize that we could do more to accelerate immediate action. That’s why we are continuously investing via our Artist Development Fund.
With this fund, we intend to help support artists composing visual narratives from perspectives that have been historically underrepresented in media. We believe that there are many artists with the desire to create this content, but who face production barriers. The goal of the fund is to offset production costs such as hiring models and renting venues to help remove these barriers.
Our recent State of Creativity survey indicates that the vast majority—89%—of global creatives are interested in more diverse and inclusive imagery in stock collections, while 76% admit it’s harder than ever to navigate rapidly evolving trends in visual culture. We believe that by providing support for emerging artists and new creative productions via the Artist Development Fund, we can help promote the creation of authentically inclusive and contemporary new visuals to meet these and other urgent market needs.
We are prioritizing self-identifying artists from underrepresented communities.
“Self-identifying artists from underrepresented communities” are creators who identify as being part of an underrepresented community, such as: Black, Hispanic & Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, Female, Disability, Age, Veteran, Religion, Body & Skin Type.
Photos, vectors, illustrations, and videos.
The funded amount will be $7,500 per selected artist.
Assets produced through the funding will be showcased across Adobe’s and its media partners’ communication channels to help inspire and promote inclusive cultural representation within the creative industry.
The artists will retain the copyright for their assets. The assets will also be available for licensing under the Adobe Stock free collection for one year. With the accessibility of this high-quality, contemporary, inclusive content, we hope to help elevate the global creative landscape with more accurate cultural representation. After the first year, the assets will be available in the Adobe Stock paid collection and the artist will receive royalties for paid downloads.
Application and Selection Process
Yes, you must be an Adobe Stock Contributor to apply and be considered for the fund. If you don’t have a Contributor account yet, please join here for free.
Becoming an Adobe Stock Contributor is simple. If you have great photos, videos, illustrations or vector content and you own all the copyrights, you can become an Adobe Stock Contributor. You must also be at least 18 years of age and the sole owner of every file you upload for sale. If your content contains recognizable persons or protected property, you also need to attach a signed model or property release.
Applications are open from February 22, 2022 to January 22, 2023.
Applicants will be notified via email on receipt of their applications. Artist Development Fund recipients will be selected and notified on a rolling basis.
Yes, all applicants will be notified via email.
Approximately 10 artists per quarter will be selected for the Artist Development Fund. Applying artists may submit a single application indicating interest in a single creative brief topic, or in multiple topics. Artists may submit up to one project idea per topic. We strongly encourage only one application per artist, even if indicating interest in multiple topic proposals.
The Adobe Stock Advocates team will confirm via email when applications are received. Similar to the Adobe Creative Residency program, the review period for applicants may vary. Applicants may remain “under consideration” for up to one year.
Adobe has created a selection committee of internal employees from diverse communities and ranges of expertise. This committee will have representation from the artist communities targeted with the program and possess expertise in each of the asset types, such as photography, videography, and graphic design. Equity and fairness will be top of mind in portfolio reviews and the selection process.
Funding, Submission & Production Process
Artist Development Fund recipients will be selected and notified on a rolling basis. Each fund recipient will be paid 50% upfront via bank transfer approximately 30 days after signing a contract with Adobe. Subsequent payment will be made upon artist’s submission and acceptance of works by Adobe.
We recommend that artists provide 50% of their assets within two months of receiving the funds, and the remaining 50% assets one month after the first submission. We recommend this production and submission cadence to help ensure artists are able to take full advantage of promotional opportunities as part of the Advocates program, to share their work with the Adobe community and our partner communities.
Yes. Our goal is for you as a selected artist to have your own creative approaches to authentically portray visual cultures associated with your own personal regional, ethnic, and lifestyle communities. In recognition of this, Adobe Stock will take their lead, collaborating with them to develop original concepts and meaningful new bodies of work that express their genuine stories and experiences.
We will review all assets for relevance of the topics, as well as aesthetic and technical quality. Acceptance criteria includes meeting file specification requirements, accuracy of keywords and descriptions, and the presence of model and property releases, when applicable.
The file size requirements are identical as Adobe Stock’s general submission guidelines listed here.
Other Questions
To help elevate the global creative landscape through accurate cultural representation, we want to make this high-quality, contemporary, inclusive content to be accessible to all. This content has more visibility—and provides artists with greater promotional opportunities—than it would otherwise have on Adobe Stock. All of the content acquired through the Artist Development Fund will become part of the Adobe Stock free collection for one year, then will be made available in our paid collection for an additional year. Artists will receive royalties for paid downloads.
Yes! We encourage you to submit your content and hope that the Advocates program creative briefs are helpful and inspirational. We invite you to submit work responding to creative briefs directly to the Adobe Stock Contributor portal here.
We are continuously working to improve the discoverability of our existing diverse and inclusive content among the more than 230 million assets available on our website.
We recently launched a search feature called “query dependent geo ranker” that better surfaces diverse and inclusive content relevant to that customer’s locale. We know that customers want diversity, but diversity in the US may be different from diversity in Japan for instance. By leveraging the behavioral data of the locales to inform the ranker, we have seen that customer behavior naturally is surfacing the diversity our customers are looking for within each of the individual locales.
We also are in the process of improving search algorithms, dictionaries, model releases, and metadata tagging to better surface diverse and inclusive content along with making product improvements on our site to improve accessibility.
Adobe Stock is committed to our company ethos of diversity and inclusion, and to having balanced representation across our collection. But we know we can do more, and we will accelerate this process with the Artist Development Fund.
Adobe Stock Artist Development Fund: Adobe Stock is investing funds to go specifically to self-identifying artists from underrepresented communities. Artists participating in the fund are Adobe Stock artists. They will receive $7,500 per project for providing. In partnership with the Adobe Creative Residency team, the Artist Development Fund application will be accessible on the Creative Residency site starting February 22, 2022. Creative Residency artists may also apply to the Artist Development Fund.
The Adobe Creative Residency Community Fund: Adobe launched a $1,000,000 Community Fund to support creators of visual digital work. Offering grants of $500–$5,000 USD for either a portfolio project or a paid Adobe project commission. The program started running in May 2020, and the grants and commissioning work will be given each month.
There are two ways to be an “Ally”:
- An Ally is a person who will closely collaborate with a self-representing person in the community to capture visual assets that will be submitted to stock.adobe.com for the Advocates program. The Ally is both the artist and Artist Development Fund applicant. The Ally retains copyright of assets if awarded the fund. Ally should reasonably be considered an Ally to the community being represented in the shoot and must be close to the applicant (i.e, a family member).
- If an Artist Development Fund applicant is a member of an underrepresented community and requires physical assistance to capture the visuals on a project, he/she/they can select to work closely with a person of their choosing to handle the camerawork and help with the physical execution of capturing the project.
-The community member is the Artist Development Fund applicant and would retain the copyright of the work because the imagery is their vision.
-In this scenario, the Ally captures footage per the Artist Development Fund recipient’s creative direction, does not retain the copyright, and is not awarded the fund.
We encourage disabled, veteran, and/or Indigenous communities to consider this option.
Please contact allies@adobe.com for further information.
A video stock footage clip is a 5-60 second clip that is either silent (no sound) or may have ambient natural sound. There are no voice-overs, narration or music. Video stock footage requires model releases if recognizable people are in the clips.
Adobe MAX
The Creativity Conference
Oct 14–16 Miami Beach and online
Adobe MAX
The Creativity Conference
Oct 14–16 Miami Beach and online