Last week, IdeasTap’s hub at the Underbelly Abattoir in Edinburgh was visited by Freya Murray, Senior Arts Executive at Sky for a great session on applying for the Sky Arts Ignition: Futures Fund. Read her advice on everything from collaboration to the cost of living…
Can you tell us a bit about Sky Arts Ignition: Futures Fund?
This year we launched Sky Arts Ignition: Future’s Fund to provide support to emerging artists.
Over the course of the year we’re going to offer five emerging artists – aged between 18 and 30 – £30,000 each to help take their work to the next level. You’ll also get mentoring support from someone at Sky.
We want the project to take your work to the next level. So, for example, if you’re a theatre director who has done a lot of assisting, but you’re now looking to do your own production, then the fund could go towards that.
Some of the fund can go towards living costs, but the majority must go towards the artistic outcome.
The fund goes across several artistic disciplines including theatre, music, visual arts, dance and film (as long as it’s in an art-house context).
Why is the fund limited to 18-to-30-year-olds?
We want to help bridge that gap between formal education and being a working, professional artist.
How does the application process work?
The whole application is done via an IdeasTap brief. Make sure you read all the terms and conditions, to check that what you are putting forward is eligible. For example, if you wanted to put the money towards going to go to drama school, then the fund would not apply. It has to be used outside education, to put on your own project.
We want to see exciting ideas and a strong project plan that shows how Sky Arts Ignition: Futures Fund could really make a difference to you. Make sure you upload examples of your work to IdeasTap and detail past experience too; this will be looked at as part of your application. If your idea is groundbreaking and innovative – fantastic; but if it is a fresh approach to a more traditional subject, we also want to hear from you. You just need to have a new way of looking at it. Our main focus is how the fund can help take your work to the next level.
Sky Arts, along with IdeasTap, will go through all the applications and draw up a longlist. At that stage we will ask for a detailed project plan – your ideas of how you will actually make this project happen. From there we will whittle it down to a shortlist of 10 applications.
We have some external judges who will look at the shortlist and then in November we will announce two winners. Applications will reopen in January and we’ll choose a further three winners from there.
Will there be any kind of record made by Sky Arts of the winning projects?
Yes. Sky Arts will make a short documentary about the making of your project, this will be filmed in HD and shown across Sky Arts channels. We’ll also be looking for the winners to come along to other Sky Arts events to showcase their work and be ambassadors.
Can you apply on behalf of a company?
We are looking for individual applications that show how this fund will help you as an artist. However, we understand that you may be working with other artists to put on the project. So, if you can demonstrate how working with a group of artists / a company can help you as an individual artist then that would be eligible; it’s all about how you position it.
If you win, can you seek supplementary funding from elsewhere?
Yes, you can seek funding from elsewhere but Sky Arts would need to be the main funder.
To apply for the Sky Arts Ignition Futures Fund, visit the brief.