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DIY 9 Call for Proposals

18 Apr 2012 admin

Platform is collaborating with Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and others to participate in DIY 9 – professional development by artists for artists.

DIY is an opportunity for artists working in Live Art to conceive and run unusual training and professional development projects for other artists.

Deadline for proposals to run DIY 9 projects: Noon Monday 14th May 2012

These guidelines are available in large print on request

Download a PDF version of this Call for Proposals.

Download a version of the Monitoring Form. The development of a Live Art practice is as much about the exploration of ideas and experiences as training in skills and techniques. DIY 9 wants to hear from you if have an idea for an exciting, innovative and idiosyncratic Live Art professional development project that offers something new and is geared to the eclectic and often unusual needs of artists whose practices are grounded in challenging and unconventional approaches, forms and concepts. If you think you can initiate and run a DIY professional development project then read the guidelines below and send LADA a proposal.

DIY 9 builds on the strengths of previous DIY schemes which have proved to be invaluable experiences for project leaders, participants and organisers alike. Reports on previous DIY schemes can be found here.

DIY 9 is a Live Art Development Agency initiative developed in collaboration with Artsadmin (national), Fierce (West Midlands), Live at LICA (North West), Platform (national), Whitstable Biennale (South East) Yorkshire Sculpture Park (Yorkshire), Colchester Arts Centre (East) and The Works, Dance and Theatre Cornwall (South West)

We are planning to support eleven DIY projects that will take place sometime between August and October 2012. Each project will receive £1,000 support.

DIY projects may take any form, and can be loosely or rigorously focused on a specific theme/content. We particularly welcome proposals from artists from culturally diverse backgrounds and disabled artists, and artists working in other “politicized” territories.

For DIY 9 we also encourage proposals that specifically respond to one of the following project opportunities – five of the eleven DIY projects will be selected according to these opportunities:

1. Live Art, oil sponsorship and the Arab Spring 

Platform has followed the activities of oil companies during the 2010-11 revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, and during the same time period has examined the role of galleries and museums in propping up oil companies by accepting their sponsorship. Arts institutions have stood up for artists such as Ai Weiwei, while simultaneously accepting funds from oil companies who have close ties with political regimes persecuting artists elsewhere. The politics of sponsorship, the relationship between galleries and arts communities, and the particular focus of art coming out of MENA during this time of political change all warrant considered creative attention. As democracy is fought for on the streets of Cairo, Homs and Tunis, we ask what democracy there is in our public arts institutions. Artists are invited to propose DIY projects which consider creative responses to, and the roles artists can play within, the ethics of sponsorship, the seal of approval given to oil companies by cultural institutions, arts communities as potential labour unions, solidarity across borders and/or other responses to these and related issues. The project must at least in some aspect take place in the UK, but the artist may be based anywhere in the world. This project is supported by Platform. For further information and questions, please contact Mel Evans [email protected]

Platform: www.platformlondon.org

For more on oil in Middle East and North Africa see posts by Mika Minio-Paluello on blog.platformlondon.org

For more on galleries and oil sponsorship see Not If But When: Culture Beyond Oil especially features on Ai Weiwei, Ali Ferzat & Ahmed Basiouny, and comment by Omar Robert Hamilton.

For details of the four other project opportunities, please visit LADA.

Focus Areas