Deadline for proposals: 5pm, Monday 1 June
You can listen to an audio version of this callout here
The Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance is seeking two types of proposals for its next conference, on 7-9 October at Barnsley Civic, on the theme of Common Ground:
- Creative workshops or activities (up to 1 hour) that might take the form of: a facilitated discussion or exploration of an issue or topic; an exploratory, reflective or meditative space that could include making something; or a movement- or walking-based activity (indoors and/or outdoors). We expect to offer between 12 and 15 of these.
- An artist residency (across the 3 days of the conference) that engages attendees in an open, inclusive and participatory way and connects with key themes below. Ideally, we’d like there to be a final co-produced artwork (in any medium), that captures the key messages and energy of the event which would be shared with delegates and the wider CHWA community. This could be a permanent or a temporary work.
The conference will host up to 300 attendees in a warm and nurturing environment, allowing professionals in creative health and related fields to learn from each other and affect deep and much-needed systemic change. There are number of key themes taking shape and we’d encourage you to respond to one or more of these:
- Working at the ‘edges’ of creative health: where do creativity, culture, health and wellbeing meet related areas like social and environmental justice?
- How does creative health work relate to the economy, money and ownership?
- Empowerment, lived experience, leadership and coproduction in creative health
- Local and global cultures - including migration and cross-cultural or multicultural work
We warmly encourage proposals from creatives, practitioners and communities working across arts, health and education settings who are often excluded from access, visibility and leadership within the cultural and health sectors, including people of diverse racial and cultural heritages, LGBTQ+ communities, Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people, people living with long-term health conditions, and younger people.
For the workshops and activities, we can offer a free conference ticket. If you're freelance or otherwise not covered for this work by your employment, we can offer a fee of £150 and travel costs. (If you're employed and your organisations can support your travel costs we’d be very grateful, but if not, we may be able to help.)
For the residency, we can offer £1,000 (inclusive of preparation), plus free tickets to the conference, travel and accommodation as necessary. A materials budget is also available and will be agreed following selection.
Please do let us know about any other access needs or preferences we can support, either for this application process or for the work itself. We are happy provide BSL as necessary.
The workshops and activities will be in rooms at Barnsley Civic that hold 60 (The Old Art School), 30 (Meeting room 1) or 12 (Meeting Room 2) people. You can read more about them here.
The artist residency will be based in the Panorama space, a large open plan area where lunch, teas and coffees will also be served, but it could also have satellite or breakaway elements.
At this stage we're just keen to hear your ideas – please fill out the form and we will let you know if you're successful, and then we can work together to refine your proposal. If you are interested in both the workshops and the residency, tick the appropriate box and explain your idea for each (or how you would adapt the same idea).
We will be choosing proposals based on how they respond to the themes, and whether they feel safe, realistic and equitable. We also want to represent a range of different types of practice and areas of the country. The selection panel will comprise Tony Cealy (freelance theatre practitioner/cultural producer), Thahmina Begum (co-chair, CHWA), Lara Eggleton (CHWA) and Victoria Hume (CHWA).
We'll do our best to make our selection and inform all applicants within 3 weeks of the deadline.
You can complete the form here, download a recorded version of it here, or a word document version here. If you're using the word version, please email it back to [email protected]. There is an option to submit an audio or video file on the form, or you can email it to us at [email protected].