“Who do We Think We Are?” b-side Festival(United Kingdom)

The Artworks should respond to the theme and can be responsive to Portland’s heritage, culture, and geography.

The b-side festival commissions theme and site-responsive work for public spaces on Portland revealing aspects of the island’s environment and communities and their relationship to elsewhere.

Who Do We Think We Are? is a development of Common Lands and of b-side’s work on Portland, exploring the relationship to the place and people they work with: residents, artists and multi-disciplinary partners.

WDWTWA? begins with themes of identity, home, and migration. Through your responses they want to explore and widen this lens and extend the conversation, hearing from new voices adding richness and variety, challenge and conversation.

About B-Side Festival

• The festival takes place over a four-day period with installations and events at several locations across the island. The commissions form the core programme of the festival with artists also contributing to talks and other events prior to or during the festival.
• Work can be for indoor or outdoor contexts, intimate or large scale, static, mobile, durational or event based.
• Proposals for artworks and interventions should respond to the theme and can be siteresponsive and aim to intrigue and engage audiences.
• They welcome proposals that may involve working with Portland residents and visitors as individuals or groups or equally for more intimate, reflective artworks and encounters.
• Proposals should be for new work but may be part of a larger or on-going project.
• They expect artworks to have a presence throughout the festival or if event-based to include several performances or audience opportunities.
• Applications are invited from artists at any career stage and working in any media including visual art, digital, sound, film, text based work, live and performance art, social media and socially engaged practice.
• b-side values diversity and is working to make the application and commissioning process accessible to all. They welcome proposals from those currently under-represented in the arts. They will endeavour to work with artists to mitigate barriers to making their work for the festival.

Funding Information

• Proposals can be for any amount up to £6,000
• There is an additional £1k budget for artists travel and accommodation, for both the Research & Development day(s) and for the Festival period.
• They expect to commission across a range of budgets from £1000, with a maximum of 3 awards at the £6000 level.
• Artists may submit up to three ideas at varying costs within the £6000 commission budget maximum. Please submit a separate application for each idea.
• Applicants are welcome to bring additional funding from other sources to support their proposal if it is greater in ambition than the commission levels allow. In certain circumstances, they may be able to help source additional funding.

Benefits

• The selected artists will have access to curatorial support, installation assistance, venue/site facilitation and help with finding accommodation. Artists will also have the opportunity of using the b-side shop front ‘project space’ – Outpost, in Fortuneswell, Portland for use as private or public facing research, meeting or workspace and engagement venue prior to the festival. Your work will be in the b-side festival programme which is marketed nationally and internationally in print and online and there is an opportunity for your work to exist online.

Who can apply?

• They are inviting all artists: visual artists, poets, composers, storytellers, comedians, performers, musicians to dive into the provocation: Who Do We Think We Are?
• If you make work that is playful, maverick, challenging, inclusive, poetic, strange, magical, beautiful, or reflective.
• They welcome applications from artists at any stage in their career, with or without formal training and encourage applications from people under-represented in the arts including artists with lived experience of migration.
• Artists who might use engagement and participation in their work are welcome to apply (please note that there is approximately 16 weeks to make the work and therefore depth of social engagement may be limited).

For more information, visit b-side.