Together they represent a wide range of practices across literature, music, performing, visual and contemporary arts. Jerwood Bursaries provide funding of up to £1,250 to help early-career artists, curators and producers explore and develop their practice by enabling them to gain new skills and knowledge. They support self-directed professional development opportunities, including early-stage research, skills development, mentoring or training. This second round of Jerwood Bursaries for 2019 was specifically aimed at those with between one to five years’ length of professional practice.
The fund, open from 15 July to 9 September, received 389 applications in total from across art forms and from all over the UK. Each longlisted application was allocated to two Artist Advisers, according to the artistic specialism most relevant to the proposed activity. The selection panel was made up of Jessica Carden, independent curator and member of the collaborative curatorial practice Mother Tongue.; and Jerwood Arts staff – Lilli Geissendorfer, Director, Jon Opie, Deputy Director, and Sarah Gibbon, Project Manager.
Ahead of opening the Jerwood Bursaries for a second round in our 2019 pilot year, we improved the way we support individuals with access requirements and caring responsibilities, such as childcare and support for those with disabilities. For this second round we made available an additional £250 per application to cover these costs separately for the artists, curators and producers who would need them. This meant that for some applicants, the total grant amount available was £1,500. We also made improvements based on our work to encourage artists to value their time and skills appropriately in an application, increasing the clarity of our guidance around the inclusion of an appropriate fee, referring applicants to industry guidance, and restructuring the application form to make this a clear priority within the budget section.
Many of the selected artists, curators and producers have multidisciplinary practices and will be using their bursary to learn specific new techniques and cross-disciplinary approaches. Visual artist Rae-Yen Song will carry out moving-image and animation research, building on existing practice to incorporate existing drawings and ideas into moving-image; Jasmine Gardosi will explore how beatboxing can augment her performance poetry work; Sara Green will work with a technologist to use bespoke software in choreography; Laura Murphy plans to undertake a period of mentoring and training in lip-synching with Dickie Beau, experimenting with its incorporation into her circus practice; and Andy Truscott will undertake a period of training in modular synthesis to extend his composing practice.
Read more about the projects here.
We will be announcing our 2020 funding programme, including further rounds of Jerwood Bursaries, on Monday 2 December 2019.
