In September 2024, residents of University Hills applied for an ACL Music Festival Neighborhood Grant from Austin Parks Foundation. At the time, a community member had been offering free youth tennis lessons at Dottie Jordan Neighborhood Park. Providing these lessons required paying to reserve the court, a cost which multiple families took upon themselves to cover – that is, until the lessons became more and more popular – a good problem to have! But this meant the court needed to be reserved weekly, and the cost became too burdensome for the families to continue taking on the expense. The community didn’t want to stop the lessons, so they applied for an ACL Music Festival Neighborhood Grant from APF in order to get the court reservation cost covered.
While this application was not typical for APF’s ACL Music Festival Grants, which provide funding for infrastructure and maintenance projects at parks, APF recognized the value that was being provided to the community, and realized that this was a great opportunity to serve as a trial run for a new form of grant: ACL Music Festival Activation Grants.
APF provided a grant to the community, which served as a pilot and helped to inform the design of the Activation Grants, which became available in February 2026. Activation Grants are awarded to Park Adopter groups and other stakeholders who want to provide free, public events in parks that are not often active and are in need of support to kickstart engagement and increase participation in the park. The goal of APF’s Activation Grants is to encourage positive park usage and promote community building.
“A well-used park is a well-loved park!”
An ideal Activation Grant will help the park engage users long-term, encouraging community members to keep coming back to enjoy their park again and again. This made the Dottie Jordan request a no-brainer to serve as the pilot for this new type of grant. By receiving $6,000+ to cover tennis court fees, the community was able to provide 18 months of free youth tennis lessons at Dottie Jordan Neighborhood Park. Lessons ran from January 2025 to June 2026 with 61 lessons provided to 712 participants who ranged in age from 5 – 14 years old. Due to its success, the community members applied again and received an additional round of funding from APF for $4,600+, which will fund another 18 months of court fees, allowing the continuation of free lessons through the end of 2027.
Do you have an idea to activate your park? Think your park could benefit from an ACL Music Festival Activation Grant? Here’s some additional information:
What is an Activation Grant?
Activation Grants are intended for park adopters, park stewards, and community members who are interested in facilitating a public event (“activation”) within their park, such as a movie night, exercise or fitness class(es), community event or holiday celebration. Activation grants are awarded up to $2,000* and will be accepted on a year-round basis.
What sorts of events can an Activation Grant fund?
Single-day events, such as a movie night, holiday celebration, cultural event, or recurring events, such as sports lessons, yoga/fitness classes, birdwatching tours, guided plant identification walks or other ways to engage with nature in your local park.
I have an idea for an Activation. Where do I start?
Review our FAQs and the city of Austin Parks and Recreation’s Special Events Policies and Procedures to see if any permits and/or reservations would be required. Then complete our Grant Interest Form or email grants@austinparks.org
Do I have to be a Park Adopter to apply for an Activation Grant?
No. While being an established Park Adopter can be very helpful in navigating the application and permitting processes, and when organizing an activation, it is not a requirement.
Do I need to have a Sponsored Fund Account (SFA) or contribute funds to receive an Activation Grant?
Having an SFA with APF is not a requirement to apply for an activation grant.
How do I apply?
Complete an activation Grant Interest Form.
*When the community applied for this grant, we did not have a mechanism in place to award grant funding for this type of request. So this unique grant was used as a pilot to help us inform our decisions on what would become our Activation Grant program, which opened in February of 2026. We determined that Activation Grants of up to $2,000 are available for parks on APR property, with the goal to be able to provide funding for activations throughout the city.