Deadline: 20-Jan-22
Applications are now open for the Black Girl Live Fellowship, an accelerator programme designed to empower black queer women storytellers in South Africa with resources and business skills that will equip them to become sustainable creative entrepreneurs.
The fellowship produces and commissions experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary stories made by black and queer women storytellers. It is an experimental space – where the creative process meets a business bootcamp that covers everything from funding models to producing, intellectual property and more.
The fellowship supports poets, playwrights, theatre directors, set designers, costume designers, lighting technicians and editors while cultivating meaningful artistic connections and exploring how these works can be further expanded to create economic spin-offs and business models for the fellows outside of the programme.
Manyano Media uses programmes like the Black Girl Live fellowship to foster conversations around the value of the intellectual property and how being knowledgeable on entrepreneurship, IP and ownership are currencies of empowerment, too.
Manyano Media believes that innovative and impactful theatre is made in collaboration and in spaces that foster learning, experimentation and access to resources. To create theatre and works that advocate for change and a shift in the narrative as it responds to and reflects the world they live in, creative practitioners need to have structures in place that make it possible to produce and tell stories that shift and challenge representations of the contemporary South African black female on and off stage.
Benefits
Selected fellows will receive:
- A mentor who will serve as dramaturgical support throughout the fellowship period.
- A mentor who will serve as entrepreneurial support throughout the fellowship period.
- Guest mentors who will serve as technical support
- Access to professional networks
- Seed capital to test and develop an idea or new work and create a toolkit for harnessing funding and investment opportunities to further develop their proposed project.
- A space where the work can be developed
Eligibility Criteria
- Applications are open to black, queer, women storytellers based in South Africa.
- Applicants must be above 21 years of age.
- Applicants must have graduated in the last 5 years from any South African training programme.
- Applicants with experience in the following disciplines can apply: Theatre, performance art, dance, multidisciplinary, poetry.
- Applicants with experience in the following disciplines can apply: Theatre, performance art, dance, multidisciplinary.
- Applicant must commit to the fellowship period: 9 February – 9 April 2022
- Must be based in Cape Town for rehearsals, production week and showcase: 21 March – 9 April 2022.
- Proposed project must not be longer than 45 minutes.
- The final piece must require no more than 2 performers.
- The proposed project idea may also be the continuation of a project first developed as part of your training.
For more information, visit https://www.manyanomedia.com/black-girl-live