Submissions open for CatchLight Global Fellowship Program

Deadline: 9 December 2023

CatchLight is accepting submissions for the Global Fellowship Program to award visual storytellers who are poised to ignite social change through their photography, videography or leadership by leveraging the power of visuals to create impactful audience engagement and innovative distribution models.

They support individuals looking to cultivate significant audience engagement with inventive methods of distribution that will increase the impact of their work.

Benefits

$30,000 award.
Potential access to additional future funding through the CatchLight Impact Fund.
Paid travel and accommodations for the 2024 CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit, April 26-28 in San Francisco.
Personal development opportunities, including executive coaching.
Impact strategy and networking support from CatchLight staff and the extended network.
A community of like-minded Fellows and industry professionals with opportunities for mentorship, education and speaking engagements.

Deliverables

A key component of the fellowship deliverables is sharing learnings and processes with the CatchLight community and wider field. Fellows are responsible for sharing outcomes and insights through three primary reporting mechanisms:
- Public presentation of outcomes;
- Interview(s) of fellow and/or key stakeholders;
- Visual documentation and data collection;
- Fellows will attend the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit, an annual event held each spring in San Francisco.
- Throughout the Fellowship year, Fellows will be invited to attend additional events and check-ins. Some of these will be mandatory.

Eligibility Criteria

You may be the ideal candidate for the Fellowship if you are a(n):
- Long-form storyteller with a specific impact project;
- Leader with a plan to advance/or grow the field;
- Educator with innovative approaches to supporting upcoming storytellers.
Proposals will be assessed on how they employ and strengthen new methods and potential solutions with an eye towards one or more of the following target outcomes:
- Innovative Distribution: Testing a new distribution method of an existing project to effectively engage a specific audience through visuals.
- Community Activations: Testing how visual storytelling can be leveraged to engage specific audiences and/or address specific community information needs.
- Field sustainability: building systems and models that push the field of visual storytelling or media ecosystem forward.

Requirements

Requirements include but are not limited to:
- A fellowship statement on how visuals in general and your work specifically ignite social change, who your work aims to inform and what human connections your work creates. (100 words)
- A thesis statement summarizing what you would like to do and why. (100 words)
- A description of the proposed work. (250 words)
- A description of your distribution, engagement and/or impact plan that identifies your target audience for this work. (250 words)
- A plan to gather impact feedback. (100 words)
- A timeline for the work which can extend beyond the grant period.
- A budget estimate for the proposed work. This budget can exceed the award amount but please note where CatchLight funds would be used
- Three topic ideas for sharing learning with the CatchLight community
- 10-20 images which, if awarded, CatchLight has the rights to use in promotional materials.
- Three professional references. Contact information must include email and phone number.