The TIME GRANTS program comprises 350 stipends for visual artists at 7,000 Euro, to be awarded based on biannual open calls.
The application process is digital, and does not take artists’ age, artistic medium or current trends into consideration. In order to support the diversity of various artistic positions and processes, there are no guidelines regarding contents or formats of artistic practices to be funded, nor are detailed project plans called for. The allocation of the grants is based solely on the previous artistic development of the applicant.
The selection of the TIME GRANT recipients takes place in an independent, self-organized process. The jurys are chosen in a participative process – taking criteria of diversity and equality into consideration – and are composed primarily of artists.
The total funding provided by the TIME GRANTS program weighs in at circa 2,5 million Euros annually. If the Berlin Parliament ratifies the program in October 2015, the TIME GRANTS can be awarded from 2016 onwards.
WHY TIME GRANTS in BERLIN?
7 Reasons to Support Art with Time
* because TIME is an essential condition for current and future artistic labor.
* because they support the 10,000 visual artists of Berlin – facing increasingly precarious living and labor conditions – quickly, directly, and precisely.
* because they recognize art as a public good – and the basis of cultural and economic development in Berlin.
* because they invest TIME in the art and city of tomorrow, giving recognition to initiative and commitment.
* because they are a structural reaction to a societal shift in artistic practices, and provide the flexibility to support all artistic media and career phases.
* because they are developed from within the artistic community, they respect and value artistic freedom and self-organization.
* because they are an up-to-date, radical and effective instrument to support artistic quality on a spectrum of innovation and continuity.
On the Introduction of a New Funding Program
Rooted in the 11 Point Program of the Independent Scene Coalition (Koalition der Freien Szene), and prefigured by initiatives such as Haben und Brauchen (To Have and To Need), the TIME GRANTS recognize individual artistic practises as the matrix of cultural development and an emancipated urban society. In view of the growing numbers of artists coping with structurally precarious living and work conditions, the TIME GRANTS provide an investment in the freedom of the artistic community that is as urgently needed as it is exemplary.
Along with the introduction of exhibition fees and the fund for research, the TIME GRANTS form a contemporary update to the presently inadequate funding structures for independent laborers in the field of visual arts by the State of Berlin: At the moment, only 15 work grants and an even smaller number of project grants (3 in 2014) are available for a total sum of circa 10.000 visual artists.
By creating a scope of freedom for autonomous artistic deveopment, the TIME GRANTS pose a structural reaction to a shift in current artistic practises, transitioning from a product-oriented to a time-based and interdisciplinary changed concept of art, as well as to the current fields of action and needs of the individual artist.
TIME as a dimension worthy of support does justice to the complexity and societal potential of today’s artistic labor in global-local contexts: self-organized, process-oriented work, interdisciplinary and performative modes of production, artistic research as well as collaborative, immaterial, previously unrecognized, unknown and new forms of production are all equally addressed by the TIME GRANTS. In short: with time, art as a medium of reflection and motor of social change is enabled in a spectrum of innovation and continuity without any categorical exclusion.
The TIME GRANTS support a diverse sphere of artistic positions and processes, exactly because there is no strategic focus (which eventually produces monocultures), and because the stipends are not linked to market pressure or oriented towards the production of events.
As an emancipatory instrument for Berlin’s artistic community, the TIME GRANTS program is structured in a self-organized manner with a participatory jury selection. The 350 grants are awarded following a public open call, based on the previous work of each applicant, in two rounds every six months. This enables both short-term efficacy as well as a large impact. The application is completed through a simple, digitized process. The jurys are nominated in a participative process – taking criteria of gender (etc.) equality into consideration – and are composed primarily of artists.