Creative Commissions Round 2: Call for Practitioners

Commission Themes: Health & Wellbeing / Environmental Sustainability / People + Place-shaping
Artform: open
A range of Commission budgets available: £1,500 - £10,000 (including VAT)                 
Location: Exeter
Timeline: May – end September 2024
Deadline for applications: 12noon on 25 April 2024 

Background
Creative Arc is funding a new round of creative projects that will take place between May and September 2024.  

We are looking for projects with meaningful community engagement and participation at their heart, led by Exeter/Devon-based individual creative practitioners or organisations, and which involve Exeter-based communities (Exeter District Boundary - see map for details.)  

Projects must be relevant to one or more of our programme themes: 

• Health & Wellbeing 

• Environmental Sustainability 

• People & Place-shaping 

Creative Arc is jointly funded by the University of Exeter and through a percentage of Exeter City Council’s allocation of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (a central strand of the Government’s Levelling Up agenda). This funding is focussed on the role of culture and creativity in developing and shaping place. 

Project Aims 

• Deliver tangible outcomes for community and place  

• Contribute to ‘building pride of place and increasing life chances’

• Support local business (this includes freelancers and independent practitioners)  

• Increase opportunities for people to engage with and participate in arts, culture and creativity  

• Support opportunities for the development of skills

Funding 

For this round, we have a total funding pot of £40,000 available, and intend to use this to support a variety of projects with awards ranging from £1,500 up to £10,000. This is to encourage proposals for projects that are in the earlier stages of development as well as those that are more fully realised. 

Application Criteria 

This is an open call in terms of artform and project outputs.

Proposals must: 

• Involve an Exeter-based community (of interest, geography or need). By ‘Exeter-based’, we mean within the Exeter District boundary. This is due to the nature of the funding through the Shared Prosperity Fund. The Exeter boundary is defined by the 13 wards that make up the District Authority. Please see map for details. If you have any questions on this, please ask the Creative Arc Team. 

• Be led by an Exeter/Devon-based Creative Practitioner (an individual or a group/organisation) from any artform with a track record for community-engaged practice. To be eligible for this commission, you must be able to identify the community with which you intend to work, or already be working with a specific community. While we are open to applications from across Devon, we will prioritise applications from Exeter-based Practitioners/Organisations. 

• Be relevant to one or more of our programme themes of Health & Wellbeing, Environmental Sustainability, and People & Place-shaping. 

• Describe projects that will deliver activities and/or outputs by 30 September 2024. 

We actively encourage applications from practitioners/groups who have experienced barriers to making work – LGBTQI+, female, non-binary, disabled, global majority, and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Research input

A key aspect of Creative Arc’s remit is to engage researchers from different disciplines from across the University in the projects we support: to provide opportunities for knowledge exchange between academia, the creative sector and communities. While we invite you to indicate which aspects of your project might benefit from research input in your proposal, you do not need to identify a named academic or have this in place. We can make those introductions.

How to apply:  

Please tell us about your project by completing this short form by 12noon on Thursday 25 April. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered.

All applications will be reviewed by members of the Creative Arc Steering Group, and scored against the above-listed Project Aims and Application Criteria. Shortlisted projects will be invited for a conversation with the Creative Arc team, and will be asked to provide a more detailed budget than is required at application stage. Proposals chosen for awards will then need to submit a full budget breakdown that includes: 

• All practitioner & participant fees to deliver the project.  

• Production costs for the project. 

• Any travel, accommodation and subsistence required. 

• Practitioner/group representative attendance at planning, reflection, evaluation and dissemination meetings. 

Please note: all funding awards are inclusive of VAT. 

If you have any questions, please get in touch with Belinda Dillon, Creative Arc Programme Manager, on b.dillon@exeter.ac.uk.  

This project is part-funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.