Are you a mid-career artist, designer, or creative with 5-10 years of experience in architecture, design, or spatial practice, whose work is dedicated to (re)imaging the future of your African city? You are invited to apply to the Prince Claus Fund Building Beyond Mentorship Program 2023 and define the future of public space and community in your city by activating the imagined possibilities of your localised context.

Building Beyond brings together 12 experienced designers, creatives, and artists over the course of a year to foster conversation, collaboration, and exchange within the cohort; to support each participant in their own individual practice; and to facilitate exchanges between the cohort and relevant external practitioners. They support practices that engage with challenges related to your city’s public space and communities to propose alternative ideas and methods that align the physical city with the realities and imaginations of the lived city. They seek to foster locally-rooted, critical design practices, and cultural productions that challenge ideas of space and citizenship, reaffirm agency, and restate ownership. Building Beyond is an alternative educational structure where you come together with your peers to reflect on your practice, activate your practice within your local context, and gather ideas and universalities from different urban contexts – aimed at reimagining the future of your contexts and continent.

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Benefits from Prince Claus Fund

• The programme consists of peer group sessions, guest speaker sessions, and two in-person intensives in the form of ‘Lab Weeks’—one in the African continent, and one in the Netherlands—where there will be further opportunities for exchange and to build your network.
• In addition to this, each participant receives an award of €10,000 and guidance from mentors to work on the concept for a body of work that is outlined in their application.

Eligibility for Prince Claus Fund

• You have ±5-12 years of relevant professional experience.
• You are from, living, and working in Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Chad, South Africa, or South-Sudan.
• And you are an artist, designer, or creative whose individual practice relates to design, public space, architecture, activism, policy, and the digital space.

Selection Criteria

The following criteria are used for assessing applications:

• Original: the work is innovative and artistically interesting
• Transformative: the work engages with pressing social/political issues, is challenging and thought provoking, and aims to create lasting change
• Context-specific: the work is important in and relevant to the local context
• Inclusive: the work is linked to the ultimate aim of more inclusive societies, connecting people in ways that resist marginalisation, oppression and division
• Impactful: the award will make a real difference to the professional development, engagement and impact of the individual’s practice
• Lastly, Potential to Accelerate: the individual has the potential to become a leader in the field, the work is engaged and focused on relevant social issues within context

Application of Prince Claus Fund

The application includes questions relating to your involvement in the mentorship programme, your practice, and the concept outline of work to be developed within the mentorship. They also ask for a portfolio of previous work, C.V. and references, and a pitch video.

The deadline for the submission of applications is 15 June 2023 at 23.59 CEST. Only complete submissions received in the platform before the deadline can be considered.

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Lastly, It is important to visit the official website link found below to access the application form.

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Similarly, Visit oyaop.com and oyaschool.com for more scholarship opportunities.