Open Call: We Contain Multitudes Studio Visits

Collective, Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), and LUX Scotland are inviting disabled artists to apply for studio visits as part of We Contain Multitudes.

We Contain Multitudes is a new, three-year collaborative project between Collective, DCA and LUX Scotland and is funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. This partnership has enabled our organisations to begin working together with the aim of creating systemic change in the visual arts sector in Scotland. We are committed to questioning the institutional ableism in the sector and to imagining a future in which disabled artists and arts professionals have increased access to opportunities, are visible, and their expertise and experiences are truly valued. This includes disabled artists and arts professionals being represented as staff in organisations and on boards, their work shown in exhibitions, and their voices heard in decision making processes.

We Contain Multitudes contains three main strands: commissioning three new artworks in a supportive and anti-ableist way; generating research to disseminate the findings of the project and to help influence lasting change in the sector; and creating meaningful organisational development within each of our separate organisations, to ensure our institutions and programmes better represent the diversity of the Scottish population.

We are inviting applications from disabled artists who would like to present and discuss their work with us at one of this series of online studio visits. These will each last one hour and take place online between 10am – 5pm on various dates in September 2024.

We are planning to make around 24 individual online studio visits in total (between 16 – 27 September 2024) and would like these to be a useful experience for artist participants who would like the opportunity to discuss existing work and research with us and build their professional connections. We are looking forward to these studio visits as a way to broaden our knowledge of artistic practices, deepen our professional networks and also form part of the wider curatorial research phase of this project that will eventually involve commissioning three artists later this year (see timeline below for more detail).

• Selected artists will each be paid a fee of £175 for taking part in one of these studio visits (the fee is calculated on 4 hours work at current Scottish Artist Union rates and includes up to 2 hours of preparation time, 1 hour of meeting time and 1 hour paid rest time)

• BSL interpretation and live captioning is available

• Funds for mobile data and /​or support for internet connection is available

• Studio visits will be hosted by project manager Lauren La Rose

• Each studio visit will be with different groupings of the project team present (with a minimum of 2 people per studio visit, including staff from at least two of the partner organisations at each meeting). These will include Collective (Sorcha Carey, Director and Katie Brennan, Producer, Learning); DCA (Beth Bate, Director and Tiffany Boyle, Head of Exhibitions); LUX Scotland (Kitty Anderson, Director and Eve Smith, Learning Programme Manager).

Find out more on elligibility, how to apply, access and timeline by following this link.