UK India Connecting Cultures
Overview
UK-India Connections through Culture is designed to help the two countries work more closely together in the arts and putting in place the building blocks to make that happen. At the heart of the programme lie three core principles of strong creative relationships: we try to ensure that they are reflected in all of our projects, and all the projects that the programme supports.
1) Equality of respect and learning: there is a huge amount that the UK can learn from India, and a huge amount that India can learn from the UK.
2) Open-mindedness and curiosity: collaboration involves being challenged and being open to new ideas, new approaches, new ways of working.
3) Think long-term: we’re trying to have a long-term impact on knowledge, understanding and practice.
This programme offers a number of small grants for well-established producers or organizations from either UK or India to undertake their own ‘creative networking’ – i.e. exploratory visits. These grants are available to cover some of the cost of trips where those trips are focused on developing networks, contacts and understanding required to undertake collaborative work.
Eligibility:
Any arts producer or representative of an arts organisation in the UK or India, who is both interested and able to undertake collaborative working with artists and organisations in the other country.
Grant amount:
The grant is for a maximum of £800 per person, or the equivalent in Indian rupees at the time the payment is made. In exceptional cases, where there is a strong case in point, we will fund a trip for up to two people from an organisation - a maximum of £1,600 or the equivalent in INR.
Purpose of the grant:
The grant is intended to make a substantial contribution towards the costs of visas, international flights, some local travel so that you can visit more than one place, and some costs on the ground.
These small grants are not intended to cover the full costs of trips. It is important for producers or organizations to demonstrate their commitment towards their project and one of the ways in which this can be established is through meeting some of the costs from their own organisational budgets, or finding other sources of funds to meet other costs.
Added support towards arrangements:
We can advise on places to go and people to see and put you in touch with people: in fact we expect this to be the case. We expect that most trips will be a mixture of firm appointments, some seeing work, and a little bit of space to “follow your nose”.
What we can’t do, however, is build an itinerary for you or in any sense manage your trip. You are ultimately responsible for making your own visa, travel, insurance and accommodation arrangements.
Assessment procedure:
Please be aware that this is a competitive process, as we receive far more strong applications than we have resources to support. This means that some applications that meet all the criteria may still be unsuccessful, and we make final selections based on how well the proposal can meet the core principles, artistic quality and audience reach. Further, incomplete or ineligible applications will not be included in the assessment procedure.
We also are aiming to build a balanced ‘portfolio’ of organisational relationships and collaborative projects, across artforms, geographies and approaches, in order to help develop the capacity of both countries to work together, and to better understand what collaboration can mean. Priority will be also given to artists, producers and organisations that have not previously received a UK-India Connections through Culture Creative Networking grant.
Responsibilities of successful grant recipients:
We will request a simple, short report on your trip and the collaborative project or relationship ideas that you have developed, within four weeks of the trip being completed. We will in principle look to place that report on this website for other artists and organisations to see, although we will be sensitive to issues of confidentiality.
If and when the trip contributes to work being shown in either the UK or India, we expect crediting in any publicity material, appropriate to the investment that will have been made.
Creative Networking Grant
The British Council will continue to offer between 20 -30 Creative Networking grants each year to enable producers organisations to make exploratory visits to the partner country to build relationships and develop plans for collaborative projects and work. This will be a small grant of £800 to contribute towards costs.
How to apply?
If you have any queries about the process for submitting applications please contact Preeti Gaonkar on preeti.gaonkar@britishcouncil.org