The Jerwood Artangel Open is a new £1 million commissioning initiative that has been set up to tap into the rich vein of unrealised artistic potential in the UK.
The Open offers an unparalleled opportunity for emerging artists in the UK to share their ideas with us for exceptional site-specific projects that require significant resources and a committed production team. This new initiative also includes new opportunities for trainee producers.
In the past ten years some of the most exceptional cultural experiences have
been located within significant sites and contexts around Britain: Think of
Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of The Battle of Orgreave in South Yorkshire, the Petshop Boys’ Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square, Angus Farquhar’s night walk on the Isle of Skye, Rachel Whiteread’s House in East London and most recently, The Sultan’s Elephant.
These visionary projects have changed the way we think and feel about art, where we live, our world and our place in it. Events of this magnitude have the capacity to transform our expectations as to what the most compelling works of our time might be. How they might be imagined, shaped by the artists and experienced by the audiences.
These are the kinds of bold and challenging conceptions that have inspired Jerwood and Artangel to collaborate on a new initiative. Both organisations are convinced there are many, many wonderful ideas out there that could make a similar cultural impact; just waiting for the right moment, and support structures.
The Jerwood Artangel Open sees itself as a facilitator or midwife of sorts; as it can be very difficult to predict or anticipate what forms, ideas and inspirations are circulating in the artistic ether. However, neither organisation pretends to know in advance how such projects might be brought into being. What the new commissioning process is about is the importance of actually finding out.
The involvement of Channel 4 as a broadcast partner for The Jerwood Artangel Open will help broaden the outreach and impact of the commissioned projects by providing support for television films and documentation.
Proposals can be made by practitioners of any artistic discipline, as individuals or groups, by individual artists or in collaboration with curators or producers. The proposals can be for projects in response to any non-traditional-arts site or situation across the country: For example not in a gallery, theatre, cinema or concert hall – but more or less anywhere else and in any medium.
The Jerwood Artangel Open invitation to artists, is genuinely open:
1. Three proposals will be identified from the Open call.
2. The commissions will be developed and produced by Artangel for presentation in the UK between 2008 and 2010.
3. There are no preconceptions as to what the Open will bring forward.
4. The hope is to be challenged and enthralled by ideas that are daring.
WHAT KINDS OF PROPOSALS CAN BE MADE?
The Jerwood Artangel Open is looking for proposals that relate to particular sites or situations, which are not habitually used for the presentation of the arts.
Proposals can be for a monumental sculptural form, a multiple-site performance, an environmental project, an ambitious moving image or new media installation or something else entirely.
The project can be conceived for any kind of medium or material.
The life of the project can last for anything from a few minutes, to a few years.
Proposals can be made by:
1. Individual arts practitioners,
2. Collaborative groups or
3. By producers or curators working with artists.
4. Proposals are especially encouraged from practitioners at a point in their careers where they would most benefit from this opportunity.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL?
All arts practitioners from across all disciplines.
The Jerwood Artangel Open welcomes proposals from and including (but not limited to) visual artists, filmmakers, choreographers, composers, writers, theatre practitioners, applied artists and producers.
You must have been living and working in the UK for a minimum of three years prior to October 2006.
You should, however, not be in higher or further education at the application closing date in October 2006.
HOW MUCH MIGHT A COMMISSIONED PROJECT COST?
Between £50,000 and £500,000 will be invested in an individual commission.
In other words whatever is needed to realise the idea properly and fully.
At this stage there is no need to know what each project will cost. Artangel and the commissioned artist(s) will crate production budgets together.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE
An application form must accompany all project proposals.
Please include this loose with your application (do not staple or bind).
If you require an application form by post, please send an A4 self-addressed envelope with a first or second class stamp or download an application form.
Proposals can ONLY be submitted by POST:
THE JERWOOD ARTANGEL OPEN
PO BOX 57073, LONDON EC1P 1RP
Please note the following restrictions on the format of proposals:
CLOSING DATE FOR PROPOSALS: OCTOBER 6, 2006
Short-listed applicants will be notified by Friday November 10 2006.
If we have not contacted you by this date, you have not been short-listed.
Successful projects will be developed and realised between, 2008 and 2010.
THE SELECTION PROCESS
All proposals will be considered by a selection panel comprising:
Jeremy Deller Artist
Shirin Neshat Artist/filmmaker
Emma Rice Theatre director
James Lingwood Co-Director, Artangel
Michael Morris Co-Director, Artangel
Short-listed applicants will be invited to present and discuss their proposals with the selection panel and observers in London in November 2006.
Short-listed applicants will be paid expenses for travel within the UK.
The Jerwood Artangel Open represents an extraordinary opportunity for a visionary artist or group of artists. It’s the kind of opportunity that perhaps can only come to an artist a few times in their career. And as such it is a moment when the artist’s power as a “prophet” or “imaginer of realms beyond” (what has gone before) can shape the future of how we respond to art. And indeed, what we think art is.
For more information go to:
JERWOOD CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
www.jerwood.org
ARTANGEL
www.artangel.org.uk
CHANNEL 4
www.channel4.com
ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND
www.artscouncil.org.uk
If you have any further questions about The Jerwood Artangel Open, email: sian@thejerwoodartangelopen.org.uk
Or you can write to Sian Emmison at:
The Jerwood Artangel Open
PO Box 57073
London EC1P 1RP
