$10,000 Carstairs Grant open for applications
Media Release
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) today announces the $10,000 Carstairs Grant is open for applications.
The Carstairs Grant aims to support socially-engaged art projects that embrace participatory and collaborative experiences and bring participants into active dialogue with the artist/s in order to involve audiences beyond the art community.
The grant is intended to contribute to artwork production costs to assist the successful applicant/s to develop and present new work.
In recognition of ongoing public health concerns and the challenges they can pose to participatory experiences, proposals may, but are not required to, consider the digital and virtual space as a valid and essential arena for collaborative artistic endeavour.
Applications for the 2023 Carstairs Grant close on 22 October 2023. 1 x $10,000 scholarship will be awarded. To read the Terms and Conditions, view previous winners, and apply, visit visualarts.net.au/nava-grants
2022 Carstairs Grant recipients Dominique Chen, Libby Harward and Caitlin Franzmann are collaboratively developing a new socially engaged work that centres fermentation as a way of thinking through culture, diversity and belonging to place. The outcome of the work, Cultures of Care, will be incorporated as part of the Cementa Festival and residency program in Kandos NSW in 2024.
Dominique, Libby and Caitlin have continued to develop their relational practice in the lead-up to their residency, with their participatory gathering ‘The Stories We Water’ exhibited at Metro Arts, Queensland in June 2023.
NAVA Executive Director Penelope Benton said, ‘Numerous crises in recent years have had a huge impact on the practices and incomes of many socially-engaged artists. At the same time, the increasing severity of climate change coupled with the repercussions of a global pandemic and ensuing economic challenges, has underscored the fundamental and indispensable nature of practices centred around connectivity, empathy, and reciprocal interaction for all of us. Thanks to the generosity of the Carstairs Prize donor, NAVA eagerly anticipates the innovative concepts that will arise from submitted applications.’
Named after the Carstairs, the grant drew its name from an eccentric blend of writers, poets, painters, pianists, and illustrators who immigrated to Australia from Fife, Scotland in the 19th century.
The Carstairs Grant is funded by a private donor and administered by NAVA.
Media Enquiries
Leya Reid
e: media@visualarts.net.au
About NAVA
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) is a Membership organisation which brings together the many voices of the contemporary arts sector to improve fundamental conditions of work and practice. We do this through advocacy, education and the Code of Practice.
Image credit
Image: 2022 Carstairs Grant recipients Dominique Chen, Caitlin Franzmann and Libby Harward, The stories we water (2023), participatory event at Metro Arts, image credit: Masimba Sasa.
ID: A group of people are seated on the floor in a circle in a room with blue walls and colourful curtains. They are tending to plants and seeds that are in the middle of the circle and talking to each other. There is one person standing, looking over the group’s work.
