‘At Home in the World’ – Arts charity offers £1,000 to Asian creatives to produce work online as a response to current global pandemic…

Open call for submissions from the Bagri Foundation…

IF YOU’RE looking to create work online but worried about how you’re going to invest time and money in a project – the Bagri Foundation could help you.

The Arts charity is offering five Asian artists or collectives £1,000 to produce work in response to the current Corona virus crisis. The foundation is requesting submissions be made by April 17.

The grants will be split into categories comprising visual art, film, sound, lectures and courses, and the written word.

It is inviting visual artists, writers, musicians, curators, filmmakers, researchers and academics to apply. It wants to support artists who can safely produce work from their homes.

“How do we cope, connect, and continue to create?

“How can we explore new ways of thinking about survival, care and solidarity? Perhaps you want to make a work that has nothing to do with this crisis. Perhaps you have always made work that explores subjects which have become ever more urgent,” says the foundation on its website.

Selected works will be chosen by a jury and then be presented across the Bagri Foundation’s digital platforms.

The Foundation says it is keen to see applications from those who have been “adversely affected by Covid-19 and who have suffered cancellations of work as a result”.

It adds that it has no strict criteria for the commissions, but wants to support work that “explore ways of thinking about survival, care and solidarity, offered from a place of hope”.

“I feel more than ever that art and culture are a key component of how we will get through this very difficult period.

“’At Home in the World’ is one way in which we hope to offer assistance and to release a wellspring of creativity that can be experienced digitally,” said Alka Bagri, Bagri Foundation Trustee.

Chelsea Pettitt, head of arts at the Bagri Foundation, said: “We are constantly exploring new ways of assisting artistic projects and we hope that these new commissions will be the first of many similar initiatives.

“As we enter a new world, which may look very different from the one we’ve always known, we invite those who can challenge our thinking and encourage others through unique and unexpected ideas.’

The Foundation is looking for work from artists of the diaspora and from Asia and in the “broadest sense” – including Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

‘At Home in the World‘, says the Foundation, is inspired by monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s collection of autobiographical stories of the same name. These communicate a sense of mindfulness, life teachings and insights.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master and has built up a lifetime of work promoting peace, wellbeing and compassion. Dr Martin Luther King called him “an apostle of peace and non-violence”. Now 93, he continues to popularise what has been termed, ‘engaged Buddhism’ and has inspired many monasteries around the world that promote his teachings.

A shortlist of submissions is expected to be drawn by May 1 and final winning artist submissions announced in May or June. The commissions are expected to go live in the summer shortly after the announcement of the winners.

The Bagri Foundation is best known in the UK for sponsoring the London Indian Film Festival and supporting Shubbak (a London-based festival highlighting artists from the Arab world). It is a biannual festival in London and was last presented in 2019.

Main Picture: ‘Phoenix Will Rise’ – Rana Begum and Marina Tabassaum
Is this tomorrow? Alserkal Avenue and WhiteChapel Gallery
Courtesy of the artist

Links
Submissions must be made by Friday, April 17, 5pm (GMT); 6pm (BST) and in English.
You can apply here (Google Form): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSelvY4HieiRATqc9eJ8QWlX_TSomF1fTeCoJ_EPb9AcoLCfuA/viewform
For more details of ‘At home in the world’: https://bagrifoundation.org/at-home-in-the-world/
www.bagrifoundation.org