Researching art residencies and funding

I have been researching different sources of funding that you can get for working with moving image and have decided that one of the most promising areas where I could potentially get some money to help me keep making work, and hopefully promote myself as well, is from art funding.

I have looked at Northern Film and media I found 3 different project that I could have potentially applied for. However, for two of them I have already missed the deadline and for one of them I do not fulfill the criteria for application. Reading about them has been a learning experience however, as projects that are similar may come up in the future and I may fulfill the criteria for future sources of funding. I will share some of the information about each project below.

Berwick 2017 Residency – Now Open for Applications

This was a 6 month artist residency from Berwick Visual Arts and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. It was for people whose art made use of and relied heavily on moving image. As part of this residency they were offering a bursary of £8000. Private accommodation and studio space in Berwick Upon Tweed were also being offered as part of this residency.

What they wanted from an artist in return was new work created that will benefit from one of the following:

• "The possibility to spend six months in Berwick to produce new work at a crucial development point within their practice, with Berwick Visual Arts and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s support."
• "An interest in investigating the context of Berwick and the wider county of Northumberland."

Or

• "An interest in working in response to the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival 2017 programme theme Ultramarine."

I was beginning to be seriously interested in applying for this residency and was imagining what it would be like to live in Berwick for 6 months. I have had an idea of an art/film project to do after university which entails buying 6 rolls of super 8 film and making a 3 minute long film that is edited in camera with no cuts every month for 6 months. I was thinking about adapting this project idea to fit with this brief. For example I was thinking that each film in the series could be inspired by a story I was told by the people of Berwick. One of my teenage friends, who I had on Facebook until I deleted it in the summer, had this thing called door to door poetry where he would knock on random doors and chat to the people in that house and then go away and write them a poem, which he would then go back and deliver to them (and also post it on the internet as a plug for his work obviously). I was thinking I could combine my one super 8 film per month idea with that one (with his permission of course) and do a sort of door to door filmmaking in Berwick. For a bursary of £8000 I might even be able to make this a bigger project, possibly using professional actors or extending my films beyond the one roll of super 8 or something. 

My head was considering all of these options while I was reading, but then I suddenly got to the part of the page where it said, "Applicants should be able to demonstrate a strong commitment to their artistic practice through a track record of creating new work through projects, exhibitions and commissions. The applicant artist must have been out of college (BA graduate) for a minimum of 3 years, or have fully completed an MA or PhD." After that I was like, "Oh crap! Can't apply for that then."

BALTIC 39
The next one I looked at was an opportunity to display work in BALTIC 39 that is moving image based for 5 days, but I had missed the deadline for that.

TalentLab 
The next one was a more broad filmmaking opportunity, just wanting to give writers director and other filmmakers a chance to develop their skills. I had missed the deadline for this as well however.

Conclusion
Overall however, I realised from seeing these opportunities that there is funding out there for film & moving image based art and for dramas as well. I decided then, that I will keep looking on the Northern Film and Media site regularly for new opportunities and that I will also look for similar things elsewhere.

Refferences and sites visited:
http://northernmedia.org/news on 03/12/2016, http://www.b3media.net/talentlab/ on 03/12/2016, http://northernmedia.org/news/berwick-2017-residency-now-open-for-applications on 03/12/2016 and http://northernmedia.org/news/baltic-39-open-call-figure-four-open-for-figure-four-exhibition on 03/12/2016