Request for Applications: Building Beyond Programme (Cycle 5)
Section
Are you an artist or cultural practitioner engaged with modalities of spatial examination or intervention in your urban context? The Prince Claus Fund invites you to apply for Cycle 5 of Building Beyond.
Building Beyond is a multi-disciplinary programme that supports creative practices exploring how communities relate to each other and public space in cities, creating opportunities for collectively imagined realities. Building Beyond brings together 9 mid-career creatives (± 7-15 years of relevant professional experience) working across diverse mediums, approaches, and interpretations of the overarching theme.
Supported by 3 Senior Fellows, this cohort will come together over the course of 9 months to support each participant in their own individual practice and how to activate it in their context; and to facilitate conversation and exchange between the cohort, its growing network, and relevant external practitioners. The programme consists of various online interactive formats, such as peer group sessions, individual feedback, and guest speaker sessions. They will also meet in person once within the programme in the form of a "Lab Week", an intensive fellowship gathering. Lastly, the programme carries a group project for the cohort.
The programme will begin in March 2026 and will be ongoing consistently for the duration of 9 months. Expectations will be communicated in a timely manner, and the schedule will be shared with the participants in January 2026 to provide them with enough time to plan for their participation.
To facilitate inter-cohort connections, the programme will encourage participants to interact in group and sub-group sessions, ranging from presentations to workshops and in-person Lab Weeks. To support the participants’ individual artistic practice, there will be encounters in sub-groups and one-on-one sessions with the senior fellows to dive further into the development of their body of work. To facilitate interchanges with practitioners, relevant guests are invited to be a part of the programme.
Program Structure
- Building Beyond will consist of:
- Introduction: aimed at acquainting the group. Everyone in the group will introduce themselves and the concept/body of work that they will be working on throughout the programme.
- Chapters: taking place in an online format and include guest talks, workshops, reading groups, sub-group sessions, and one-on-one sessions. The content of the chapters will be curated by the senior fellows based on the practices, projects, and goals of the chosen applicants.
- Lab Week: in-person meeting moments. The goal is to spur a collective feeling amongst the group, get acquainted with the rhythms and challenges of the group’s individual practices, gain inspiration, and for participants to share their work with a different city and its practitioners through a range of workshops, site visits, and situated experiences centered on the themes and disciplines of the group.
- Group Project: a collective project aimed at reflecting the group's individual and collective interactions and developments throughout the fellows programme. The group project provides a space where the group can express their creative processes and exchanges to a broader audience.
- Closing Chapter: the programme comes to a close in a similar format to how it began, with online presentations from all of the participants in which they highlight where their body of work has developed and how they intend to engage with it in the future.
Funding Information
- Each participant receives an Award of €10,000 and guidance from the Senior Fellows Fellows to work on the concept for a body of work that is outlined in their application.
Eligible Expenses
- The use of the Award is not restricted to a pre-decided budget, but it must be used for the development of the applicant's artistic or cultural practice.
- The Prince Claus Fund covers the costs related to the Fellows Award itself, including travel expenses, visa costs, and stay. Individuals are responsible for their own travel insurance.
Eligibility Criteria
- With this open call they invite applications from individual, mid-career artists and cultural practitioners who:
- Are from, live and work in their eligible countries on the African continent. Please note that that is an expanded list from previous years, so if you have not been eligible before, please check if you are eligible now.
- Are artists, cultural practitioners, or creatives whose individual practice relates to architecture, design, spatial practice, public space, and urban communities. When referring to artists and cultural practitioners they mean people who have an individual artistic practice. They hold a broad definition of art and culture and appreciate interdisciplinary practices. Individuals who are arts managers, facilitators, academic researchers or others, without an individual artistic practice, do not fall under this category, and as such are not eligible to apply.
- Have ±7-15 years of relevant professional experience. The Fellows Award is meant only for individual artists who, regardless of age, meet the professional experience criteria, counting from the date they started engaging in a professional artistic practice to the date of submitting their application.
- Are able to communicate in English to keep in line with the communication in the Fellows award programme.
