Call for Applications: Mentorship Building Beyond Programme

Building Beyond is a learning structure where artists come together with a group of peers to reflect on their practice, activate it within their local context, and collectively assemble ideas and universalities from across the continent – aimed at engaging with the built environment as an interpretive and alterable world. They support practices that engage with the relational worlds of communities and public space in this setting. They seek to foster conversations on how resilience, humanity, and creativity in the urban environments can create opportunities for communally imagined realities in the city.

The Mentorship Programme Building Beyond is 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. This is achieved through multiple structures in the programme format.

The programme brings together 12 experienced creatives (± 7-15 years of relevant professional experience) working across diverse mediums, approaches, and interpretations of the mentorship’s overarching theme. Supported by four mentors, this Building Beyond cohort will come together over the course of a year to foster conversation, collaboration, and equal exchange; to support each participant in their own individual practice; and facilitate exchanges between the cohort, its growing network, and relevant external practitioners.

Building Beyond consists of various online interactive formats, such as peer group sessions, and guest speaker sessions. They will also meet in person twice within the programme year in the form of ‘Lab Weeks’ (six-day intensive mentoring gatherings)—one in the African continent, and one in the Netherlands. The programme carries two group projects for the cohort, namely: a public-facing event opportunity, and a collective publication. In addition to this, each participant receives an award of €10.000 and guidance from mentors to work on the concept for a body of work that is outlined in their application. While the grant is not limited to a strict project plan or budget, the participant’s proposed project will be used as a baseline for the programme and will orient it’s content.

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 year will be shared with the participants in December 2023 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. To facilitate interchanges with relevant practitioners, the programme will bring on relevant guests to be a part of the programming throughout the year.
• The Mentorship Programme Building Beyond will consist of:
  • Introduction: aimed at acquainting the group. In two consecutive weeks at the start of the mentorship in January/February 2024, everyone in the group will introduce themselves and the concept/body of work that they will be working on throughout the programme.
  • 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 curated by the mentors based on the practices, projects, and goals of the chosen applicants.
  • 2 Lab Weeks: in-person meeting moments that run for 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.

Eligibility Criteria

• With this open call, they invite applications from individual, experienced artists and cultural practitioners who:
  • Are from, live and work in the eligible countries: Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Chad, South Africa, or South-Sudan.
  • Are artists, cultural practitioners, or creatives whose individual practice relates to architecture, design, spatial practice, public space, and urban communities. When referring to artists and cultural practitioners they mean people who have an individual artistic practice. They hold a broad definition of art and culture and appreciate interdisciplinary practices. Individuals who are arts managers, facilitators, academic researchers, or others, without an individual artistic practice, do not fall under this category, and as such are not eligible to apply.
  • Have ±7-15 years of relevant professional experience. The Mentorship Award is meant only for individual artists who, regardless of age, meet the professional experience criteria, counting from the date they started engaging in 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.