Apply for Moving Narratives Mentorship Programme

A partnership between the Prince Claus Fund and British Council, each year Moving Narratives brings together 12 socially and politically engaged mid-career artists and cultural practitioners working across diverse mediums and approaches. Different interpretations of the mentorship’s overarching theme are welcomed.

Supported by four mentors, participants are encouraged to collectively experiment, exchange, and develop artistic strategies that address dominant narratives and the inequalities they sustain. They invite applications from artists who are active within their local communities, and they prioritise practices that focus on intersectional and critical approaches that challenge dominant worldviews and discourses.

To foster conversations and collaborations within the cohort, and to support each artist in their practice, the programme includes workshops, reading groups, guest talks, and peer-to-peer review sessions. The mentors guide participants and provide constructive feedback, to encourage exploration and to challenge and support their practice. Most of the activities are online, but the cohort comes together twice in person for the Lab Weeks (six-day intensive mentoring sessions). Within the programme, the cohort collectively creates a joint project in the form of a printed publication and online platform.

Moving Narratives will be carried out with three main goals in mind: firstly, to foster conversation, collaboration, and exchange within the cohort; secondly, to support each artist in their own individual practice; and, thirdly, to facilitate interchanges between the cohort and relevant external practitioners.

Programme Structure

• The programme will begin in January/February 2025 and will be ongoing consistently for the duration of a year. Expectations will be communicated in a timely manner, and the schedule for the programme will be shared with the participants in December 2024 to provide them with enough time to plan for their participation.
• To facilitate inter-cohort connections, the programme will encourage participants to interact in group and sub-group sessions throughout the year, ranging from presentations to workshops and in-person Lab Weeks. To support the participants’ individual artistic practice, there will be encounters in sub-groups and one-on-one sessions with the mentors to dive further into the development of the participants’ body of work.
  • 2 Lab Weeks: in-person meeting moments that run for a total of 6 days (excluding travel). The goal is to spur a collective feeling amongst the group, get acquainted with the rhythms and challenges of the group’s individual practices, gain inspiration and for participants to share their work with a different city and its practitioners through a range of workshops, site visits, and situated experiences centered on the themes and disciplines of the group. The Lab Weeks will take place in the first and third quarters of the programme.
  • Group Project: a collective project aimed at reflecting the group’s individual and collective interactions and developments throughout the mentorship. The group project goes beyond documenting what has happened during the programme, and instead provides a space where the group can express their creative processes and exchanges to a broader audience. The group project consists of a publication element and a website element.
  • Closing Chapter: the programme comes to a close in a similar format to how it began, with online presentations from all of the participants in which they highlight where their body of work has developed and how they intend to engage with it in the future. These presentations are semi-public.

Thematic Chapters

• Three Thematic Chapters: taking place in an online format and include guest talks, workshops, reading groups, sub-group sessions, and one-on-one sessions. Each chapter spans approximately 6 to 8 weeks. The content of the chapters will be oriented by three intersecting domains:
  • Creative expressions: focusing on formal experimentation and various mediums of narrative building
  • Socio-political engagement: focusing on grass root movements, community building, and the intersections between creative practices and their social and political actualities.
  • Dissemination: focusing on modes of transmitting and disseminating critical narratives to the wider public and community.

What you will get?

• Each participant receives an award of €10.000 to work on the project or body of work outlined in their application. While the grant is not limited to a strict project plan or budget, the participant’s proposed project is used as a baseline for the programme and informs the sessions with the mentors.

Eligible Expenses

• This award is not restricted to a pre-decided budget, but it must be used for the development of the concept outlined in the participant’s application.
• The Prince Claus Fund and the British Council cover the costs related to the mentorship programme itself, including travel expenses, visa costs, and stay. Individuals are responsible for their own travel insurance. Further details on the covered expenses are communicated with successful applicants at a later date.

Eligibility Criteria

• With this open call they invite applications from individual, experienced artists and cultural practitioners who:
  • Live and work in their eligible countries;
  • Are artists, cultural practitioners, or creatives whose practice highlights marginalised histories that challenge dominant worldviews. The Prince Claus Fund and British Council hold a broad understanding of arts and culture. When referring to artists and cultural practitioners, we mean people who have an individual artistic practice. Individuals who are arts managers, facilitators, academic researchers or others, without an individual artistic practice, do not fall under this category, and are not eligible to apply.
  • Have between 7-15 years of relevant professional experience. Moving Narratives is meant only for individual artists who, regardless of age, meet the professional experience criteria, counting from the date they started engaging in a professional artistic practice to the date of submitting their application.
• Due to the nature of the mentorship programme, applicants need to be able to communicate in English.

For more information, visit Prince Claus Fund.