Mentorship Award Moving Narratives

Pilot programme by the Prince Claus Fund & the British Council

This Open Call is closed.

Moving Narratives amplifies artistic and creative practices that move our understanding of the past and drive our visions of the future in new directions through the affective, discursive, and transformative power of culture. 

Dominant historical and social narratives tend to exclude the experiences and stories of marginalised communities, silence critical voices, and erase, overlook, or at times over-emphasise differences. Presenting one-sided or partial accounts of history, these narratives often reflect systems of power and contribute to social inequalities. 

Are you an artist or cultural practitioner who believes that culture can play a vital role in questioning dominant narratives and their role in our lives? We invite you to apply to the Mentorship Award: Moving Narratives, a multidisciplinary programme that re-examines legacies of the past, defies euro-centric social and historical discourses, centres the perspectives of marginalised communities, and forges connections between contemporary emancipatory movements and their historical roots.

Programme

With the Mentorship Award: Moving Narratives, the Prince Claus Fund and the British Council will bring together 12 experienced, socially and politically engaged artists and cultural practitioners (± 7-15 years of relevant professional experience) working across diverse mediums, approaches, and interpretations of the mentorship’s overarching theme. 

Supported by four mentors, participants will be encouraged to collectively experiment, exchange, and develop artistic strategies that address dominant narratives and the inequalities they perpetuate, whether they are based on gender, race, class, or other intersectional issues. We encourage applications from artists working from their lived experiences and own communities, and we prioritise practices that focus on intersectional and locally-rooted perspectives that challenge dominant worldviews. 

To foster conversations and collaborations within the cohort, and to support each artist in their practice, this pilot programme will adopt various interactive formats that range from workshops, reading groups, guest talks, and peer-to-peer review sessions. Most of the activities will be online, but the cohort will come together twice in person for the Labs (six-day intensive mentoring sessions). Within the framework of the programme, the cohort will collectively create a joint project in the form of a printed publication and an online platform.  

Additionally, each participant will receive an award of €10.000 to work on the project or body of work outlined in their application. While the grant is not limited to a strict project plan or budget, the participant’s proposed project will be used as a baseline for the programme and will orient the one-on-one sessions with the mentors.     

Eligibility

With this open call we invite applications from individual, experienced artists and cultural practitioners who:  

• Live and work in our eligible countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe;
• Are artists, cultural practitioners, or creatives whose practice highlights marginalised histories that challenge dominant worldviews; The Prince Claus Fund and the British Council hold a broad disciplinary understanding of arts and culture. When referring to artists and cultural practitioners we mean people who have an individual artistic practice. Individuals who are arts managers, facilitators, academic researchers or others, without an individual artistic practice, do not fall under this category, and as such are not eligible to apply.
• Have ±7-15 years of relevant professional experience. The Mentorship Award is meant only for individual artists who, regardless of age, meet the professional experience criteria, counting from the date they started engaging in a professional artistic practice to the date of submitting their application.

Due to the nature of the mentorship programme, applicants need to be able to communicate in English.

The deadline for the submissions is 10 August 2023 at 23:59 CEST.

Please see the detailed guideline on the ‘How to Apply’ page mentioned above before filling in your application on the Prince Claus Awards Platform via the button below. Kindly note that only completed applications that are submitted via the Prince Claus Awards Platform will be considered.

About the British Council

The British Council is the United Kingdom's international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. Through Culture Responds—the Arts and Culture's global programme—the British Council supports the arts sector to respond to global challenges around inclusion and sustainability by capacity building and developing networks, celebrating best practices, and giving people access to international showcasing platforms.