Applications are now open for the 2023-2024 Cultural Bridge programme, an opportunity for arts organisations based in the UK and Germany who embody cultural democracy and wish to forge or develop bilateral partnerships to work together and share artistic practice.
The deadline for applications is Wednesday 26th October 2022.
The total budget available for the programme is £180,000 (approximately €209,000). The programme has two funding tiers and they anticipate the total budget will be split evenly between the two Tiers.
In both Tiers Cultural Bridge aims to encompass the geographic and cultural diversity of Germany and the four UK nations.
o Tier 1: New partnerships: Applicants can request between £5,000 and £10,000 in total per partnership. There is no requirement for match funding.
o Tier 2: Established partnerships: applicants can request up to £30,000 in total per partnership.
Cultural Bridge celebrates intercultural artistic exchange through the collaboration of all UK arts councils and leading German cultural institutions. By funding partnerships between Germany and the UK, the programme aims to build new relationships and foster artistic collaboration and cultural democracy.
The programme targets organisations who embody cultural democracy through:
o Placing communities at the heart of their work.
o Supporting people from across their communities to develop their creativity and discover their individual voices.
o Empowering their communities to work together to shape local place, shared identity, and collective agency, and
o Exploring new ways of connecting arts and society, particularly through fostering co-creation between communities, artists, and other partners.
The aims of the programme are to:
o Support international exchange and development opportunities for cultural organisations based in the UK and Germany.
o Enable social change through the development of participatory approaches across a range of artforms and in response to one or more of the programme themes:
1. Re-invigorating post-industrial places/communities;
2. Places with fewer opportunities to engage; and
3. Places and communities transformed by grass-roots activism.
o Redefine the use of public space, and
o Explore new models of innovative practice, in particular testing imaginative ways of working with communities that offer new and positive responses to social engagement.
Organisations that meet the following eligibility criteria are invited to apply:
o The programme is open to all cultural organisations with proven expertise in socially engaged artistic practice, and
o Partnerships must include at least one German partner and one UK partner, from any one of the four nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Funding is not available for:
o Individual artists – this programme is currently focussed on bi-lateral partnership development for organisations only.
o Organisations based (living or registered) outside of the UK or Germany, and
o Organisations who cannot demonstrate that they have a track record of socially engaged practice
For further information, please visit the Cultural Bridge website.
