King’s Artists brings together artists and academics to trial new ideas and test pioneering approaches, building on the university’s strong connections with the vibrant cultural community across London and beyond.
Through academic and cultural exchange, King’s Artists nurtures experimentation, supports enquiry and inspires creative responses to academic research, while providing opportunities for artists to develop their practice alongside King's researchers. These collaborations offer distinctive opportunities to students and academics, helping to deliver world-class education and research that drives innovation, creates impact and engages beyond the university.
King's Artists offers six artists the opportunity to be resident within one of the King’s faculties each year, partnering with academics to inspire new approaches to research through culture and art. The programme will make up to six residency awards of £5,000 each for new appointments during the 2019/20 academic year, and then on an annual basis. Residencies should commence within the academic year and are anticipated to last between six months and a year, on the basis of the artist spending around 20-30 days working at King’s. Up to £2,000 of the award could be spent on departmental costs, creating work, materials and production costs.
During the programme, it is anticipated that the artists will be hosted within faculties and that the award will cover freelance fees for the artist, with a percentage of the total contributing to departmental and production costs. Each faculty would provide managerial oversight, space, internal resource and collaborative input. Outcomes from these residencies will be showcased across King's College London during 2019/20 and beyond. Find out more about more about King's Artists exhibitions and events here..
All King’s Artists projects should:
- Be new collaborations between an area of research at King’s and an artist who is working at the university for the first time, or has recently become resident at King’s (within the last academic year)
- Be innovative, test new approaches and have the potential to provoke further debate on the role artistic practice can play within academic research and teaching
- Involve and engage King's students as part of the project
- Have the necessary infrastructural support and commitment in place from the relevant faculty and departmental staff
- Produce high quality and original outputs
- Have clear evaluation processes in place
- When the call is live, interested departments should complete and submit an Expression of Interest form. The university's Culture team will be able to provide further support, discussion or information if needed.
- Following receipt of a completed Expression of Interest form, each project will be assessed by the advisory group against each of the criteria listed above. (1 ‘criteria fully met’; 2 ‘criteria partially met’; 3 ‘criteria not met’. Projects will need to receive a rating of at least 2 on each of the 5 criteria to be considered for support.)
- At this stage, the advisory group may contact the applicant to discuss any areas of the proposal that need further development. Applicants will be informed by email on the outcome of their Expression of Interest
- Meetings with the successful project leads will also be set up to discuss and support the planning of the residency
- An agreement letter will be sent to the successful applicants and project funds transferred to the departmental account
- Communications on the successful applicants will be managed by the Culture team in collaboration with faculty-based comms leads
Questions can be directed to Leanne Hammacott, Head of Programming leanne.hammacott@kcl.ac.uk.
- The Culture team will create an agreement with each Faculty undertaking a residency, and will provide toolkits, web presence and communications support
- The artist would be based in the Faculty undertaking the project, and the administration of the residency would be the responsibility of the Faculty.
- All communications around the residency would be managed collaboratively with the Culture team, adhering to agreed language that reflects the programme and the university’s aims in establishing this programme.
Student experience and involvement in the project should be a key part of the proposal. However all residencies must include a lead academic who is a member of King’s staff and is undertaking research that will inform or be further developed by the proposed project.
All projects must include a King’s team member who is undertaking research that will inform or be further developed by the proposed project. Teaching Associates who are not undertaking research at King’s are not eligible to lead a project on their own; they may however lead a team which includes a King’s academic whose research will inform the project.
Yes, you are welcome to work with more than one artist or academic partner, as long as their roles are clearly defined and they are all happy with the arrangement.
The Culture team will issue a contract to both the lead academic and the lead artist, setting out the terms of their involvement in the project.
Yes. If you already have other funding in place then this can be enhanced by the residency support, providing the project still fulfils the criteria. If you are putting in an application for support to another organisation, but have yet to hear if you have been successful, please make this clear on the Expression of Interest form.
When the residency is complete, the departmental contact will be asked to provide a written evaluation of the project, along with a final breakdown of expenditure. A final ‘wrap up’ meeting will take place, with the artist, representatives of the academic department and the Culture team, and a member of the academic advisory group. This meeting will identify key learning points, and will sign off the evaluation.