Call for applications: Pro Helvetia Breathing Space funding

The call seeks to enable a modest breathing space for arts practitioners, organisations and networks across the subcontinent to rethink ways of working and reimagine the shape and position of cultural and creative work. The call is intended to open up opportunities to experiment with new possibilities and formats for artistic production, exchange, collaboration, presentation and reception, responsive to the complex demands of the present time at both a very local and global level.

The call supports entirely new ideas and initiatives, as well as the amplification or extension of what arts practitioners are already doing in response to these changing circumstances. Pro Helvetia is open to proposals that involve the exploration of new formats and approaches as well as projects that use this moment of global rupture to engage more deeply with or interrogate older methods and practices and archives – or indeed to do both. Analogue and digital approaches are equally welcome. It is not expected that proposals should address COVID-19 at the level of theme or content.

How to apply

Applications should be made via Pro Helvetia online portal here. The application deadline is 31 August.

All applications should include the following:

• A concept note of not more than 4 000 characters, summarising the why, what, how and the who dimensions of the project.
• An indicative timeline and budget.
• Applicants should use a downloadable applicant budget template. If the application is successful, this template can also be used for reporting.
• Information on the applicant, and any other individual or organisational partners involved.
• If relevant, the applicant should indicate how local COVID-19 related public health and safety measures will be applied.

Criteria

• Clarity of purpose, intended outcome/s and methods? (Is it clear what you want to do and why?).
• Originality in concept and methods, artistic quality and relevance (Will the project contribute something new and significant to the field in concept and approach? Will the project have a life beyond the immediate stage covered by the grant?).
• Track record and professionalism of the applicant and their network (Will the project be professionally executed?).

Eligibility

• The call is open to artists, collectives and organisations from across the African continent, excluding North Africa (which is covered by a parallel call from the Cairo office). Applicants should be actively involved in the professional arts field on the subcontinent.
• The call is open to all disciplines that Pro Helvetia is active in i.e. music, performing arts, visual arts, literature, design and interactive media, and inter-disciplinary work. Note that cinematographic film (long form, short form and documentary content for cinematic screening or televisual broadcast) is excluded from Pro Helvetia’s mandate.
• Activities covered by the grant should be completed and reported on by the end of April 2021.
• Only one application per individual/organisation.
• Requests should be between CHF 2 000 and CHF 10 000 in value ($2100 to $10 500). The more precise, specific and clear the budget is in relation to what you are trying to achieve, the better.
• Pro Helvetia is not in a position to cover the general salaries and running costs of organisations and institutions, beyond a reasonable project administrative fee which may be included in the budget proposal (normally not more than 10% of the overall budget). Artists and other project-specific specialist fees may however be included as eligible costs.

“The last six months have seen many of our assumptions about society, culture and economy upturned or broken,” Pro Helvetia Johannesburg said. “We see in equal measure both the emergence of possibilities for rapid and transformative change and the deepening of existing fractures and injustices. It is clear that we are inside a period of disruption that neither began nor will end with the COVID-19 pandemic and in which the larger social-economic-ecological crises of our time become vivid and present.

“For Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, we confront with renewed sharpness the question of the relevance of our central task of international exchange and collaboration in the arts during a time in which many artists on the continent are seeing their livelihoods unravelling, and in which many organisations and businesses are facing collapse. While physical mobility has been massively curtailed during this period, we have found ourselves mining more deeply the creative possibilities that inhere in the digital, not only for bridging physical distance but also as a medium for the creation and reception of artistic work.”

Email [email protected] for more inquiries. View original call here.