India-UK Together 2022: British Council’s open call seeks Indo-UK creative collaborations

India-UK Together 2022: British Council’s open call

• Grants worth INR 25 million available for Indian arts and culture organisations, festivals, and institutions to work with counterparts in the UK
• Unique opportunity for Indian and UK artists to submit joint proposals by 31 October 2021
• Opportunity to co-create work across theatre and dance, visual arts, new-media, music, film, architecture, design and fashion, literature, and inter-disciplinary arts
• Projects to explore the cross-cutting theme ‘Together' - addressing shared global challenges through the lens of digital innovation, environmental sustainability and key social issues

British Council, the United Kingdom's international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations, has announced India-UK Together 2022 - a programme that aims to boost India-UK creative collaborations. The programme marks India's 75^th anniversary of Independence and promotes opportunities to co-develop cross-cultural creative collaborations, skills and knowledge exchange and new artistic work. It takes forward British Council's commitment to strengthen bilateral relationships between the two nations through greater artistic collaborations and cultural exchange.

India-UK Together 2022 is an open call worth INR 25 million that invites artists in both countries to jointly submit creative proposals. The call promotes mutual and equitable collaboration between emerging and established organisations, festivals and institutions in India and the UK. Ideas are invited to celebrate the India-UK relationship while inculcating the cross-cutting theme of Together-to influence perception change around global challenges, including equality, diversity, inclusion, and environmental consciousness.

Eligible art forms

The all-compassing India-UK Together 2022 programme offers an opportunity to a wide array of artists and arts organisations to think creatively of newer ways of expression. The programme encourages inter-and cross-disciplinary practices across all art forms - theatre and dance, visual arts, new media, music, film, architecture, design and fashion, and literature.

Examples of projects (not limited to)

The projects submitted could range across virtual art residencies, co-productions, tours, exhibitions, showcases, conferences, performances; augmented, virtual reality projects and installations; film, online archives, guides, learning kit or toolkit; digital broadcast and even cross-disciplinary creative collaborations.

Grants details

Three winning projects will receive grants up to INR 5 million each, and the fourth project will receive a grant up to INR 10 million. Projects will need to be delivered in India between January 2022 and March 2023, with public-facing activity (digital or hybrid) taking place between September 2022 and March 2023. The winning teams will have the opportunity of touring across India and the UK.

Announcing the open call, Jonathan Kennedy, Director Arts India, British Council, said, "Our strong shared culture and arts binds India and the UK together from the past to present and is an important pillar of the bilateral future relationship. The intent of the India-UK Together 2022 programme is to mark India's 75th anniversary of independence, with some of the best creative minds across both nations - to make connections and create together for the wider world."

"Culture and creativity connect us in many ways, and the open call aims to foster deeper collaborations, providing companies across a wide array of arts an opportunity to make, share skills and put a spotlight on culture to the world from one of its biggest exhibition stages - India and the UK," he added.

The last date for submission of proposals is 31 October 2021.

More information about the process, eligibility, submission and judging criteria can be found onhttps://www.britishcouncil.in/programmes/arts/open-call-india-uk-together

About the British Council:

The British Council is the UK's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We work with over 100 countries in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. Last year we reached over 80 million people directly and 791 million people overall, including online, broadcasts and publications. We make a positive contribution to the countries we work with - changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust. Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by the Royal Charter and a UK public body. We receive a 15 per cent core funding grant from the UK government. britishcouncil.org