Apply Now! Wheatley Fellowship

Birmingham School of Art and Eastside Projects invite applications from visual artists for an Incidental Artists placement in Birmingham supported by the Wheatley Fine Art Fellowship.

Key Dates

Online Pre Application Workshop: Thursday  25 May, 12.30–1.30pm BOOK HERE

Application Deadline: Sunday 18 June, midnight

Interviews: Wednesday 12 July

Start date: November 2023

Public Outcome: Late 2024 – timeline to be agreed as the project proposal develops

Incidental Artists

‘When setting out a new allotment you should always think first about where you will sit.” Vanley Burke, artist, Birmingham.

Artists are catalysts. We are the dreamers and doers, collaborators and supporters, guests and hosts who work alongside communities to imagine and co-evolve our civic infrastructure.

In the mid-1960s the Artist Placement Group (APG) proposed and made strenuous efforts to radically transform artists’ relation to society. Adopting the role of the incidental person, the group proposed getting involved in the processes of other organisations, from steel factories to government offices. APG considered artists a hugely underused human creative resource that offered a potential benefit of tangential thinking and making. We are interested in both this function of artists ‘to watch the doings and listen to the noises’ and APG’s concept of the open brief.  We are further exploring these approaches by inviting Incidental Artists to work with us as allies, collaborators, agents of wider change, and attention magnets in a variety of contexts over an extended period of time. Find out more HERE.

This opportunity is not  imagined as an Incidental Artist placement at either the School of Art or Eastside Projects, but as a placement in Birmingham supported by and connecting to, both organisations. 

It is expected that the Fellowship  will culminate in a public outcome/s that will be developed with Eastside Projects and presented as part of our programme. The form this takes will be defined during the feasibility and development stages, but for example it might emerge as a participatory project, public artwork, exhibition, events programme, performance, or digital work.  

The Incidental Artist will also be expected to engage with students at the school during their Fellowship, but again what this looks like will be developed during the Feasibility Study stage.

The Incidental Artist will be expected to commit at least 40 days across this period to the Fellowship supported by:

• £10,000 fee (£9000 tax free stipend from the Wheatley Fellowship and £1000 additional project fee from Eastside Projects).
• Up to £10,000 production budget to realise the public outcome.
• Access to workshops, equipment and technical support at the School of Art, with the potential to connect into wider facilities, departments and research networks across Birmingham City University.
• Desk space at Eastside Projects and/or the School of Art.
• Introductions to individuals, networks and communities connected to both the School of Art and Eastside Projects in Birmingham and beyond.
• Artistic, collaborative and curatorial support from Eastside Projects.

How to Apply

Eligibility

To apply you need to:

• Be based in the UK.
• Have at least three years professional experience as an artist.
• Not be enrolled on a BA, MA or PHD course between November 2023 and December 2024.

We particularly welcome applications from artists who have Black, Asian, or Global Majority heritage, who are from lower socio-economic backgrounds, or who are disabled or d/Deaf.

Find full details of the application process, including a link to the online application platform, in the info pack HERE

Image credit – Detail of ‘You and Me Here We Are’ by Roger Coward – included in his exhibition of the same name at Eastside Projects in 2015  which re-visited his 1975 Artist Placement Group project which focused on Small Heath as part of the Department of Environment’s Inner Area Study.