Seed Awards How to Apply & Selection Process

You can apply for the Seed Award by submitting an application form through the Prince Claus Awards Platform. 

The application form includes questions relating to your practice. We also ask for samples of your work, a C.V. and reference letter, and a pitch answering the question: What drives you as an artist?

Please note that in line with our capacity as an organisation we can only accept applications in English. 

HOW TO APPLY

  1. Create an account on the Prince Claus Awards Platform and start a ‘New Submission’ for the Prince Claus Seed Awards;
  2. Fill in all of the required fields and attachments. You can work on, and make changes to the application form up until the deadline. Please make sure that you submit the application prior to the deadline as only completed and submitted applications will be considered. Please note that once you have submitted the application, you will not be able to make amendments to it.
  3. Once you have submitted your application on the Prince Claus Awards Platform, check that you have received an automatic email confirmation.

The deadline for applications is January 16, 2024, at 23:59 Amsterdam Time. We understand that applicants might have intermittent access to the internet or unstable connections, so please keep this in mind when planning your submission. We encourage you to apply well before the deadline as our online system can be busy on the date of the deadline and closes automatically at 23:59, and we cannot accept any applications after that point.

If you have any questions along the way, please refer to our FAQ or e-mail us at [email protected].

APPLICATION GUIDELINES

To successfully complete an application, you will need to provide and submit the following: 

  • a completed application form which includes your personal details as well as information about your practice;
  • a pitch that answers the question:  What drives you as an artist/cultural practitioner? This pitch can be submitted in either video or audio format and should be a maximum of 3 minutes long. If you are not able to provide a pitch in audio or video form, please get in touch with us at [email protected] and we will be happy to assist you in finding a form that works best for your circumstance;
  • a reference letter from a person or organisation that knows your work and/or has worked with you in the past (this should be signed and contain the contact details of the referee);
  • an updated C.V.;
  • supporting materials that are relevant to practice, for example, samples of your artistic/cultural work (videos, images, texts, portfolio), reviews, and interviews.

Please note that more focused applications tend to be the applications that are successful. Keep your application focused on the main themes, disciplines, and methodologies in your practice.

Please note that in line with our capacity as an organisation we can only accept applications in English. However, supporting materials can be submitted in your language of preference and video pitches can be recorded in your language of preference and subtitled to English. (For your information, softwares such as Otter, Subly, Jubler and Amara provide free transcript and subtitling tools).

SELECTION PROCESS

We aim to ensure that the selection of participants is done fairly and transparently, according to clear criteria and processes where due consideration is given to all proposals that meet our eligibility requirements.

The Prince Claus Fund commissions cultural experts from a variety of backgrounds and fields to assess the applications and advise us on the selection of the 100 Seed Award recipients.

The process is as follows: 

Phase 1: Intake and Long-list Formation

The Prince Claus Fund creates a long-list of the submitted applications that meet the basic eligibility criteria. 

Phase 2: Shortlist Formation

The long-listed applications are assessed by a group of external advisors, who come from a variety of backgrounds and are experts in their respective fields. The advisors assess the applications based on the selection criteria below and provide both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the applications and their recommendations form the short-list. 

Phase 3: Assessment & Final Selection 

Based on the outcomes of the external assessments, the Prince Claus Fund makes a final selection of award recipients. In the selection, special attention is paid to diversity, geographical spread, focus of work, level of engagement with the subject matter, and quality of practice – so if your practice stands out with regard to one of these criteria please highlight this in your application.

Please note that we receive a disproportionate number of applications from countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and South Africa and that we are not always able to award these countries proportionally to the number of high-quality applications that we receive from there.

All applicants are informed of the outcome of their application by mid-July 2024 at the very latest. 

Phase 4: Contracting and Communications

Once selected, successful applicants are notified about the award. A contract is drafted and signed by the applicant and the Prince Claus Fund and the recipient will receive a grant of €5000. 

Successful applicants will be requested to submit extra materials related to their work for the purpose of the public announcement. Prince Claus Seed Award recipients will be publicly announced by October 2024.

SELECTION CRITERIA

  • Original: the work is innovative and artistically interesting in its form, content, and mode of presentation.
  • Context-specific: the work engages with social/political issues pressing to the applicant’s local context in a thought-provoking, critical and affective manner.
  • Inclusive: the work in its content and process engages diverse or minority groups and strengthen communities in ways that resist marginalisation, oppression, and division, and is linked to their local context with the ultimate aim of creating more inclusive societies.
  • Transformative: the work (aims to) directly contributes to the enhancement of the applicant’s local context (e.g. initiates conversations, stirs debate, mobilises/builds communities, and disseminate critical perspectives, provide skills etc.)
  • Impactful: the award will influence and amplify the development of applicant's practice. We aim to prioritise candidates who are active in their local context but have not (yet) been widely recognised in relation to the stage that they are at in their career. We aim to consider applicants whose practice could really be strengthened by the grant which could be identified based on the individual's existing track record and their motivation to apply.