Artangel launches a £1 million fund for UK artists

17 Jan 2013 03:57 PM

Arts Council National portfolio organisation, Artangel, and new partners BBC Radio 4 have launched an Open call for artists. Creatives working in any media, from anywhere in the UK, can apply for funding and support for site-specific projects - and for the first time this includes artists working the digital space.

The closing date for submissions is Monday 29 April.

As well as digital proposals, the £1 million Open initiative welcomes ideas for ground-breaking projects by visual artists, filmmakers, writers, composers, theatre makers, choreographers and producers. Commissioned artists will receive funding dependent on the scale of their project and all those shortlisted will be given the opportunity to develop their proposals and meet with Open Mentors: a group of influential cultural figures including Andrea Arnold, Felix Barrett, Adam Curtis, Tacita Dean, Ryan Gander, Rachel Whiteread and Penny Woolcock. 

To mark the new alliance of Artangel and BBC Radio 4, five artists including Christian Marclay and Susan Hiller will also participate in Open Air, a series of short pieces scheduled for broadcast immediately after the Today programme from 25 - 29 March 2013.

The first 2013 Open commissions will be chosen by a selection panel including James Lingwood and Michael Morris, Tony Phillips, Arts Commissioning Editor at Radio 4, Clio Barnard and Roger Hiorns. Successful commissions will be announced in June with projects taking place between 2014 and 2015.

Open is an Artangel initiative first launched in 1999. Previous Artangel Open calls have led to some of the most iconic projects of the past decade - Michael Landy's Break Down, the very public destruction in a department store on Oxford Street of absolutely everything the artist owned and Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave in South Yorkshire, the re-enactment of a dark day in the conflict between police and colliery workers during the 1984 Miners' Strike.

Visit the Artangel website for more information and to apply.