Open Call – Future Forecast: HAVEN

Project Arts Centre is pleased to announce an open call for a series of 3 artist commissions.

Future Forecast is a series of events and artistic interventions forming part of a speculative voyage towards the future. Future Forecast is a multiway transmission with 2020+ vision.

For the Arts sector, the last few months have been a time of crisis, but also a time of reflection. The building is a luxury and we miss it. We miss artists making their work in our spaces and audiences making a journey through the building to see that work and we miss being together in that space as a team. We’ve always thought of the building as a HAVEN. Is it?

We’ve been thinking about identity. Is Project a building or a conceptual framework or both? Who is Project for? Who gets access to cultural and creative spaces? Do we use our spaces in the right way? Our ecosystem is fragile, the system we operate within is flawed and broken. We need to imagine something else. We need to address biases. We need to listen to new voices so we can make changes possible. We need to become a feminist institution. We need artists and technicians to collaborate with us to map our collective future. To imagine better ways of working. To cohabit in the building. To create new forms of presentation. To find a wider audience community who can take an active role in the work. To choreograph our way not back to the old normal but to the new possible.

A HAVEN.

We’re thinking about community, resistance, solidarity, scale, spectacle, purpose, liveness, ecology, togetherness, sustainability, flexibility, reclamation, autonomy, space to develop, honesty, openness, generosity and spontaneity.

We’ve been thinking about how hard it is to open our front door. Literally.

Project Arts Centre invites submissions from artists based in Ireland to make a new work. We would like you to think about work we could make together even if the public can’t physically see it, or if they can. The team at Project will work with you to figure out where and how it will be presented and when. You can make the work in, on, around the Project building, online, in public or another space. The audience community is important. You can work collaboratively, alone or with members of the public and in any art form.

Future Forecast: HAVEN will award 3 commissions and each commission is valued at €5000 (including fees and materials). Additional production support, promotion and documentation will be provided by Project Arts Centre.

Project welcomes applications from all artists but would like to encourage applications by artists from a diversity of national, ethnic or cultural groups (including, but not limited to, Asian, Black, Traveller and minority ethnic, refugees, people with disabilities, working-class and LGBTQI+ artists). If you’re an artist who usually works in a production context we also want to hear from you.

We’d like you to send us your idea in whatever form works best for you, text (no more than 1 page), audio, video etc. Please include a biography and 2 samples of your previous work. Please submit them by email to futureforecast@projectartscentre.ie (we will accept Dropbox or WeTransfer links). You can also send any questions and queries to this email address.

Applications are due by 12pm on Monday 10 August 2020. We will communicate decisions to artists by Monday 31 August 2020. Applications will be shortlisted by the Artistic Director and Curator of Visual Arts before they are reviewed by the whole Project team.

In the future, everyone is an artist, everyone is the audience, and everyone is invited.