While one-off financial support can provide artists with a chance to develop their independent practice, we recognise that emerging talents need links to a wider cultural ecosystem for their sustainable career growth. In this spirit, we have partnered up with key organisations from our global network to provide our Seed Awardees with further opportunities and connections within a global cultural landscape.
Fertile Ground connects Seed Awardees with organisations that offer the artists a platform to showcase their work, participate in residencies or workshops, while providing time and space to reflect with peers, form new connections, and meet with mentors who guide them in catalysing their professional development. Our programme partner organisations receive support to contribute to their sustainable development and enable continuity of their vital regional functions. All organisations are brought together to exchange and build the community and solidarity of global changemakers.
The programme has been established driven by the Prince Claus Fund's vision of decentralising our work and nurturing a South-to-South cultural ecosystem through direct investment in the local infrastructures that our Seed Awardees engage with and depend on.
Fertile Ground is partially made possible by Hawthornden Foundation.
A glance at our collaborations
In 2023, Tbilisi Photo Festival supported 5 Seed Awardees – female photographers and visual artists from their region. The festival arranged bespoke support to emerging artists to meet their specific needs, ranging from mentorship by a Magnum Photos photographer and professional assistance on new video work to financial support for the production of a solo exhibition.
“I consider the Fertile Ground programme as one of the most intelligent and extra useful programmes both for artists and the organizations. It is an incredible chance to be part of it,” – Nestan Nijaradze, Tbilisi Photo Festival's artistic director and co-founder.
What’s more, the Fertile Ground programme also contributed towards the sustainability of Tbilisi Photo Festival, which found itself in a precarious situation in the last years when political developments shifted funding priorities away from arts and culture.
