Greenpeace UK offers grants of £10K with open call for UK-based artists & activists
Melanie May | 29 November 2022 | News
Greenpeace UK has launched its first ever open call for UK-based artists and activists to make work to disrupt UK’s industrial food system.
The charity is offering three grants of £10,000 each, which will be awarded to proposals with the creative potential to confront the role of the UK’s industrial food system in the climate crisis. The project will prioritise the perspectives of artists and activists who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, people of colour and/or working class.
Throughout the project, called Bad Taste, Greenpeace UK aims to support and collaborate with three artists and/or activists inspired to create works that disrupt public, political or corporate narratives around the industrial food system.
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Alongside the grant, recipients will have access to a suite of Greenpeace UK’s resources as well as a separate production budget and a box of ash from burnt Amazon rainforest. Greenpeace UK says the ash ‘embodies the damage and violence caused by the industrial meat and dairy industry in Brazil as climate-critical forests are burnt for the expansion of animal agriculture – displacing and destroying Indigenous Peoples’ lives.’
Hannah Davey, project co-lead for Bad Taste at Greenpeace UK, said:
“Artists and activists are great systems thinkers. By working together, we’re hoping to find a sweet spot for making impactful work which really pushes creative boundaries and supports art activism as a growing field.
“Exploring the role of industrial food in the climate crisis with creative people, whose lived experience may put them in the best position to identify points of intervention, will both strengthen and radicalise actions design. Letting go of control like this is a big deal for Greenpeace, we have literally no idea what will come out of the project and that is what is so exciting about it. We’ll be campaigning in ways we can’t yet imagine.”
The project has the support of London-based artist and writer Harun Morrison, who is involved in its development as an Associate Artist, while Cuban-born artist and activist Tania Bruguera is also supporting the project and will review proposals following a paid workshop for up to 10 shortlisted applicants.
Bad Taste is open for submissions until 15 January.
Greenpeace UK has worked with artists many times in the past. This has included collaborating with Fiona Banner on oceans work, and Wolfgang Buttress on its bees campaign, while John Akomfrah has integrated Greenpeace footage from its archive into his work. In recent years, Greenpeace UK’s action pieces, props, tutorials and archive materials have also been shown at the V&A’s Disobedient Objects, Somerset House and Turner Contemporary.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.