Prince Claus Seed Awards 2024
Prince Claus Fund, Amsterdam, NL
Deadline: 16.01.2024

Artists wield the transformative power of culture to act, to live, and to imagine. From challenging norms through free expression and creating safe spaces, to initiating cooperation in the face of global crises, and asserting alternative narratives: emerging artists and cultural practitioners bring in new waves of ideas, perspectives, and energy to the positive force of culture. They deserve a chance to experiment, find their path and their communities, and gain momentum in their work. The Seed Awards aim to support this journey. 

Each year, the Prince Claus Fund grants Seed Awards to 100 emerging artists who work in contexts where cultural expression is under pressure. The Seed Award is intended to support their personal and artistic development, amplify their talent, and spark a new wave of changemakers. 

Each Seed Award recipient will receive an award of €5.000 to invest in developing their artistic and cultural practice on their own terms. 

This is a trust-based grant, which means Seed Award recipients can decide the best way to utilise the support for their artistic and cultural development: be it through fostering new perspectives, connections, investing in materials for their practice, or simply taking some time with reduced financial pressures to be able to experiment and focus on their artistic practice.

The Seed Awards offer support to emerging artists and cultural practitioners who are talented, engaged, and determined to improve their contexts and societies through their socially and politically engaged work. We are especially interested in supporting artists and cultural practitioners with innovative, grounded, and experimental art practices that are inclusive and diverse in their process, their implementation, and their reach.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
With this call for applications we invite artists and cultural practitioners who:

• are an early career artist or cultural practitioner in the first 1–5 years of your professional artistic/cultural career. We do not include years of study in this estimation and only consider the years in which you have been practicing professionally;
• are from, living in, and working in countries on our Eligible Country List. See the full list here;
• are practicing as an individual artist or cultural practitioner. We do not accept applications from collectives, groups, and organisations;
• would receive an award from the Prince Claus Fund for the first time. We grant Seed Awards on a one-time-only basis; successful Awardees from previous years are not eligible for another Seed Award. Please note that if you have applied for a Seed Award in the past and have not been granted the Award, we welcome you to apply again this year;
• have an artistic/cultural practice that is dedicated to addressing social/political topics that are relevant to your local context. We do not accept applications for work that is not societally engaged.
• have an artistic or cultural practice that is embedded in the field of art and culture. We do not accept applications from individuals whose work is: largely embedded in academia and revolves around academic research and/or largely embedded in the field of development.

ELIGIBLE EXPENSES
Each recipient of the Seed Award will receive €5.000 in a trust-based grant to invest in the development of their artistic and cultural practice. Examples of activities that contribute to your practice are: 

• participation in residency programmes, festivals, workshops, etc.;
• time and space for the development of a personal project;
• an investment into materials needed for ongoing work;
• providing compensation for collaborators.

The Seed Award is not restricted to a pre-decided budget or plan, but it must be used for the development of your artistic or cultural practice. Examples of expenses that are not eligible are:

• tuition fees for participation in activities that focus on the academic sector or represent traditional approaches to research and education (e.g. school/university programmes, scholarships, or education firmly located within a traditional institution).

With this call for applications, we invite eligible artists and cultural practitioners to apply for the Seed Award. You can apply by submitting an application on our online application platform. The application form includes a set of questions and requires supplementary materials which include: samples of your work, a C.V. and reference letter, and a pitch answering the question: What drives you as an artist? Kindly note that only completed applications that are submitted via the Prince Claus Awards Platform will be considered.  

The deadline for the submission is January 16, 2024, at 23:59 Amsterdam Time. 

More information: https://princeclausfund.org/open-calls/call-for-applications-seed-awards-2024