Creative Commissions Round 3: 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: October 2024 – March 2025
Deadline for applications: 9am on Monday 9 September 2024
Background
Creative Arc is funding its final round of creative projects that will take place between October 2024 and March 2025.
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 and through a percentage of Exeter City Council’s allocation of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. 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 £35,000 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 all activities and/or outputs, as well as evaluation data, by 30 March 2025.
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 9am on Monday 9 September 2024. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered.
In advance of your application, please visit the Creative Arc Project Pages, to see what we have already funded. Please note that we are looking to support a broad and diverse range of activity and groups through this fund, and will prioritise proposals that offer something different to previous Creative Arc projects, and groups who have not previously received Creative Arc funding.
We are also keen that this opportunity is accessible to early-career practitioners. If you have not previously delivered an externally funded project, we would require you to be supported/mentored by a more experienced practitioner, and this would need to be included in your proposal budget. As part of the application form, you will need to identify a practitioner/organisation who would perform this role.
In addition, if you have been the lead applicant on a previously successful Creative Arc project, you are not eligible to apply for the latest round of funding.
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.