Deadline: 31-Oct-21
The British Council is inviting proposals for new arts and culture projects from India and UK based organisations, festivals, and institutions for the India-UK Together Programme to mark India’s 75th anniversary of Independence.
This is an opportunity to think creatively, be innovative and explore new ways of artistic collaboration and touring across India and the UK in 2022- 2023.
Grants will be awarded to collaborative and co-created arts and culture project proposals between India and UK partners that offer positive opportunities to co-develop cross-cultural creative collaborations, skills and knowledge exchange and new artistic work with scope to tour in India in 2022- 2023.
Themes
- Projects to explore the key cross-cutting theme ‘Together’ – addressing shared global challenges through the lens of digital innovation, environmental sustainability, equality, diversity, and inclusion principles, gender equality, accessibility and empowering young leaders of the future and investigate the following sub-themes:
- Science, Arts and Heritage in times of change: exploring one of these areas or the intersection
- Arts Festivals: bringing together artists and performance companies with festivals in India to perform and present, working together to drive the enterprise economy through spotlighting culture and creativity
- Artforms: Grants are offered to applicants in all art forms: theatre, dance, visual arts, literature, film, music, architecture, design, fashion, tech-art and new media art. Inter- and cross-disciplinary practices are encouraged.
Note: other programme areas in Literature and the Creative Economy are being curated separately
Objectives
- The projects will contribute to British Council’s India-UK Together programme that marks the 75th anniversary of India’s independence. The programme aims to strengthen bilateral relationships, consider India and UK’s complex shared history with a focus on shaping the future and developing meaningful long-term creative collaborations and connections.
- The programme offers opportunities for:
- sharing the rich arts and cultural heritage and geographic diversity of the UK including cities and regions in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and India’s metros and nonmetros through innovative, new artistic works that have been co-created for touring (digital or hybrid)
- development of skills and capacity for long-term collaboration in the arts and opening new market opportunities
- strengthening cultural relations through co-creation, developing, and expanding partnerships
- mutual and equitable collaboration between emerging and established organizations, festivals and institutions in India and the UK to influence perception change around global challenges including equality, diversity, inclusion, and environmental consciousness
- projects across art-forms: theatre and dance, visual arts, new-media, music, film, architecture, design and fashion, literature, and inter-disciplinary arts
Note: Not crafts as they have a separate Crafting Futures India-UK grants programme
Funding Information
- A total of four grants (3 x £50,000 and 1 x £100,000) will be awarded to projects highlighting collaborations between India and the UK.
Project Types
Examples include but are not limited to:
- virtual art residencies, exhibitions, showcases, conferences, performances
- augmented, virtual reality projects and installations
- cross disciplinary creative collaborations
- new arts products, platforms, or festival ideas
- film, online archives, guides, learning kit or toolkit
- digital broadcast
What the Grant covers
The grant will enable arts and culture organisations, festivals, and institutions to work with their counterparts in the UK or India from January 2022 – March 2023 and covers costs to
- Enable the use of digital-virtual platforms and formats to support remote collaboration including mentorship, skills sharing, workshops, and development of arts products
- Develop skills needed to realise a creative project through shadowing or training counterparts in partner arts organisations.
- Support face to face project development between partners. Eg- research and development residencies for creative collaboration, scoping visits, contractual negotiations.
- Scaling the arts project to production and touring. Eg- purchase or hire of materials, equipment, venues, goods and/or services, artists fees, digital platforms, travel logistics, visa
- Support accessibility needs. Eg- Translations, captions, Sign language interpretations
- Support project monitoring and evaluation, marketing, and promotions
- Project management and reasonable contribution to overheads, guidance 8% of total
NOTE: For any face-to-face activity, grant recipients will adhere in accordance with both country governments regulation and guidance on travel and work to ensure the safety for the public, your wellbeing, and associated collaborators.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applications must be a partnership between at least one UK collaborator and one (or more) collaborators based in India.
- The collaboration grant is open to India and UK (including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) arts and culture organisations such as:
- Arts and culture companies, museums, cultural institutions
- Festivals
- Private consortiums, collectives
- NGOs/Non-Profit/Charites, social enterprise
- Media platforms (traditional and/or digital)
- The lead applicant can be an Indian entity or a UK entity. The lead applicant will submit the application, will represent all the parties of the collaboration, and execute the contract on behalf of the collaborators for the Grant. The lead applicant will be responsible for all communications regarding the implementation and management of the funds received through the Grant.
For more information, visit https://www.britishcouncil.in/programmes/arts/open-call-india-uk-together