PANIC! – Artists’ Network in the Crisis

In partnership with Griselda Pollock (CentreCATH and A Feminist Space in Leeds), The Tetley is proud to announce £50,000 in bursaries to help emerging local artists to produce work through the current crisis that will explore its many challenges and meanings.

Committed to the immense importance of the creative visual arts in our cities and regions, this project offers support to emerging artists in this financially precarious and psychologically challenging situation of a global pandemic.

Supporting emerging artists in Leeds

The many talented artists emerging from the city’s universities (and beyond) who choose to remain in the city need support, advice, and mentoring, and the PANIC! programme aims to assist with this by forming an Artists’ Network led by artists and connecting to established artists, curators and advisors.

PANIC! will distribute bursaries and grants to emergent artists who explore the conditions, experiences, pressures and possibilities of enforced digital sociability, and related phenomenological, psychological, social and cultural transformations that have happened in our lives due to the crisis of the pandemic. Under the title ‘In our times…’, artists will be encouraged to (and financially supported in) developing new ways to respond to the challenging experiences unfolding in and unsettling  our lives and futures.

Griselda Pollock says: “I am thrilled to be partnering with The Tetley in order to foster this artists’ network that will be able to offer real support to the creativity of the emerging artists living in Leeds and the region. Artists contribute so much to the life and meaning of our society but are now facing dire economic futures. Inviting them to reflect on, and reflect back to us,  ‘Our times…..’ with all its challenges will generate new insights and understanding of what it is to be a thinking and caring society in this moment of psycho-social crisis and economic precarity.”

Brony Bond, Director The Tetley says: “We are delighted to be working with Griselda Pollock in establishing this network to support emerging artists in the Leeds region. Her vision and generosity is incredibly inspiring at this difficult time. As artists struggle for survival in the immediate term, we are also starting to see the long-term impact this crisis is having in further increasing inequalities in society. We know that this will mean that many emerging artists will be questioning their choices as they face an uncertain future. I hope this project will come as a lifeline for those artists and enable them not only to thrive, but to creatively engage in the issues we collectively face and contribute to the new thinking, the new ways of working and the new art we will need to face the crisis and its aftermath.”

OPEN CALL: Lead the PANIC

The Tetley and Griselda Pollock invite applications for six artists to coordinate PANIC’s steering group. They will be paid £150 per monthly meeting (up to £1,950 each), and will have the opportunity to curate talks, blogs, podcasts and more. Alongside a part-time producer , the steering group would advertise, assess and distribute six bursaries and other smaller grants to artists, by application, three times per year.

Click here to find out more and to apply to be one of the six PANIC steering group artists.

The deadline for expressions of interest is 10am Friday 20 November 2020 and artists will be informed of the final selection by 26th November 2020