The 3rd Biome Collective Grant for Digital Creatives - Closed
A no-strings attached £500 grant aimed at supporting adult Scotland-based digital creatives from under-represented or marginalised backgrounds.
The grant is to support you and your work in whatever way it might be needed - materials, courses, project funding, rent, etc.
This year we are proud to be supporting two applicants with a grant of £500 each.
Grant application closed on Friday 5th January 2024.
We will select and notify the recipients by Friday 16th February 2024.
Follow @biomecollective on twitter for updates.
Full info below 👇🎨👩🏿💻
About the grant
The Biome Collective* Grant for Digital Creatives is a £500 grant aimed at supporting adult Scotland-based digital creatives from any under-represented or marginalised background**. This grant is intended to support any creative practitioner who could make use of a small lump sum to support their practice, with no strings attached.
We trust you to make use of the money in whatever way makes sense for you. For example to purchase materials, continue an ongoing project, develop your skills, replace an old or broken laptop, or to pay your rent.
In addition to the grant, and if it fits with your needs, we can offer you membership to Biome Collective, providing access to our community who have a range of experience and connections that may be useful for you. This is completely optional, and is offered as an additional form of support.
How to apply
To apply please complete the application form with the following information. You can also reach out to us by email at grant@biomecollective.com if you need any support in order to submit your application.
A short paragraph about yourself, your practice and what kind of help you need.
Any examples of your work (it’s ok if you are just getting started and don’t have a lot to show yet).
Your contact details.
The deadline for applications is: Friday 5th January 2024 at 23:59 and you will hear from us by Friday 16th February 2024.
FAQ:
*What is Biome Collective?
Biome Collective is a community of digital and physical creators (people making videogames, installations, music, and visual art), curators and producers.
We operate as a membership based organisation for like minded individuals keen to explore games, art and technology. Within the collective we share opportunities, collaborate on projects and showcase our work in order to support and encourage our individual practices.
**What do you mean by under-represented or marginalised backgrounds?
LGBTQIA+ folk, people of colour, working class, disabled, women or any other group under-represented in digital creative spaces, mainstream and independent.
What kind of work are you looking for?
Anyone working in a digital medium is eligible for the grant.
The first Biome Grant report
To try and be as transparent as possible about the ongoing process of making the Biome Grant happen and learning as we go, several members wrote a report about the first Grant’s successes and failures. You can read it here: https://www.biomecollective.com/grant-2020-report
Selection Process
Inspired by Watershed’s Winter Residency programme (and similar experiments by other arts and academic funding bodies) we’re making a significant change to how we select successful applicants this year. Rather than the committee/consensus-driven approach we’ve taken in previous years, for this year we’ll be using a semi-randomised approach.
In previous years our selection process took place over 2 stages:
The selection committee looked over all the applications in detail, with each committee member forming a personal shortlist.
The selection committee met to share their shortlists and decide on the successful applicants by consensus.
This year the process will still involve 2 stages, with stage 1 will be focused more on questions of eligibility than personal preference, and stage 2 replaced by a random selection process.
This year the process will look like this instead:
A simple eligibility condition (adult Scotland-based digital creative from an under-represented or marginalised background).
The successful applicants will be chosen at random from the shortlist.
We are making this change for a number of reasons:
While we have always tried to be fair and equitable regarding the selection process, we all have biases, and not all of them are conscious. Our previous consensus-based selection process hopefully minimised the possibility of those biases being reflected in our selections, but a random selection process seems to be a safer way of removing any bias from the process.
Each year we’ve run the Biome Grant the organising committee has shrunk. With just 5 of us on the committee this year, we did not feel we had enough people to run the same selection process we used in previous years.
Perhaps most importantly, we feel that a random selection process better aligns with our intentions for the Grant. The Grant is not intended as a prize, a reward for good work, or an act of charity. It is intended as an act of solidarity.
We recognise that it is increasingly hard to survive in a world that is becoming ever more precarious, let alone find the time and resources to develop your craft as an artist. And it is harder still for those who come from marginalised backgrounds, who don’t necessarily have the experience and support systems required to navigate complex arts funding applications.
As a collective, Biome has more access to the kind of experience and support systems necessary to navigate this world. The Biome Grant is our attempt to hold the door open as much as we can. We have a selection process solely because we do not have the resources to support every applicant. If we could support every applicant we would. Everyone deserves the time and resources to exist as an artist.