FVU New Takes is an opportunity for artists to test new ideas and thinking in moving image. The programme will provide creative support for three UK based visual artists, who are within five years of beginning their professional artistic practice, to realise a new moving image work. Selected artists will receive a £5,000 fee/budget to make the proposed piece, and final works will be launched on FVU Watch and the organisations’ digital channels. Selected artists will also receive production and curatorial support from the FVU team, external mentoring, as well as having a new text commissioned about their work. Proposals will be selected by a panel consisting of Rene Matić and Maryam Tafakory (artists previously commissioned by FVU), alongside FVU’s Director, Angelica Sule.

The call for entries will be open between Tuesday 3 September 2024 and 12 noon, Monday 14th October 2024. You can apply using the application form HERE.

Find out more about the call for entries, application process and eligibility below. 

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What is FVU looking to support?
 

FVU is looking to support a wide variety of artistic practices, including practices that differ from our previously commissioned works. We are interested to see proposals working with a wide range of techniques and methodologies; for example, digital or analogue animation techniques, working with found material, or self-shot films. 

Due to the modest budget, we are looking to support practices that are relatively self-sufficient, that do not require substantial external production support via crew, cast, specific equipment, etc, but productions will still benefit from FVU’s usual ongoing production and curatorial advice.

What will awarded artists receive?
 

• • £5,000 fee/budget to make a new moving-image work.
• • The new moving image work premiered on FVU Watch (the FVU website’s online viewing platform) will remain on there and other FVU digital channels, as part of a growing archive of FVU commissioned work.
• • Production support / curatorial advice from the FVU team, delivered via regular meetings throughout the period of production.
• • 2 x mentoring sessions from an artist or other relevant expert of your choosing.
• • A text commissioned about your new moving-image work.
  
   

Who is eligible?
 

There are no educational requirements and no age limits to apply.

We welcome applications from:

• • Individual artists and collaborative artistic groups
• • Early career artists working with the moving-image. For this award we define early career as those who are within five years of beginning your professional artistic practice at the time of applying. This means you would consider the beginning of your professional artistic practice to have started after August 2019 (though if you have taken career breaks, for example, because of illness or caring responsibilities, your practice may have begun earlier). For some artists this will mean being within five years of graduating an educational course. Others might have changed career direction and/or mark beginning their practice differently. We provide space to explain your own circumstances in the application form and are happy to discuss your situation with you in advance to help you work out if you are eligible, though we do encourage you to make your case in your own words. 
• • Those who have applied to FVU in previous years, as well as those who have not.
• • Those who are based in the UK

We cannot accept applications from:

• • Projects for which additional funding is secured, or will need to be secured.
• • Those who have previously made larger-scale moving-image work with FVU. Receiving this commission will not prevent eligibility for other larger FVU opportunities.
  
  We strongly encourage artists who are under-represented within the visual arts in the UK to apply. This includes artists with disabilities or long-term health conditions, neurodivergent artists, artists from low-income backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ artists, artists from the Global Majority, and artists living outside of London.

How to apply
 

You can apply using the application form HERE.

Applications will be made via a Google form. If you have any barriers to submitting an application please get in touch with us via email admin@fvu.co.uk.

The required items for the application are:

• • Name, preferred pronouns, email address and telephone number
• • Up to five minutes worth of video footage of your past work/s via Vimeo or Youtube. If password protected, password must be: fvu. You can submit a single clip or provide a reel of clips. You may submit a five-minute section of a longer work, but please specify the timecode for the selectors to view. If no timecode is given we will watch the first five minutes of the work.
• • A summary of your proposal in 50 words or less
• • Up to 400 word proposal for the film you would like to make
• • Website link: optional (we do not commit to viewing all websites)
• • A short artist bio telling us about your past artistic experience and artistic practice, and please include your key career moments (no more than 300 words)
• • 100 word statement on how you define the start of your professional artistic practice 

Selectors
 

The panel will be comprised of:

Maryam Tafakory, artist and Jarman Award nominee 2024
Rene Matić, artist
Angelica Sule, FVU Director

Access support to make an application
 

We are committed to making our opportunities accessible and easy to apply to and to make the process as user-friendly as we can. This is part of our ongoing work to welcome and encourage applicants facing barriers to apply. With the opportunity targeted at those within the first five years of beginning their professional artistic practice, we're particularly keen to support first time applicants and those under-represented in the visual arts. 

If you would like to talk through making an application in advance of applying you can email us at admin@fvu.co.uk to ask a question over email or make an appointment to speak to a member of the team over the phone or via video call.  Please note that the advice we give on making an application is on the eligibility and suitability of your proposal and will have no bearing on its assessment. You do not need to have spoken to an FVU member of staff before making an application.    

We can contribute up to £200 towards a fee for an Access Support Worker to help you make an application, for those who need one. Please email admin@fvu.co.uk at least one working week before the deadline to discuss how we can help.

If you would prefer to submit your application as an audio or video recording you can do so. The online application portal provides the opportunity for you to submit links to audio or video files containing your 400-word proposal, 300-word artist bio and the 100 words to define the start of your professional artistic practice. These audio or video recordings would be in addition to the 5 minutes of past moving image work that we ask everyone to submit. We will still ask you to complete contact details and a 50-word summary of your proposal in written form to assist the processing of your application. No assessment of the production quality of the audio or video recordings submitted as an alternative to these written sections will be made.

Terms and conditions if selected:
 

Selected artists will be asked to sign an agreement with FVU in advance of receiving the first instalment of fee/budget. This agreement will, amongst other things include:

• • Agreement to create the work while ensuring the safety of everyone involved.
• • The right for FVU to host the work on its website and digital channels on an ongoing basis (FVU reserves the right not to showcase the resulting work on its website and digital channels).
• • Terms for crediting FVU, Jerwood Foundation and Arts Council England for their support of the work.
• • That FVU will retain one edition of the resulting work that FVU will have the right to sell to a public collection to be accessible to future audiences. Funds received will be used to continue FVU’s future work supporting artists. The artist will retain rights to all other editions of the work, and the edition size of the work is at the discretion of the artist.
• • Terms around future exhibitions and screenings of the resulting work: That the Artist has the right to consent for the Work to be screened or exhibited independently of FVU, and where these have been organised by the Artist alone, all fees received for doing so will be retained by the Artist; FVU also has the right to screen or exhibit the Work (which may take place at third-party venues) free of charge, though they will notify the Artist in advance of this taking place; For any screenings of the Work negotiated or facilitated by FVU with third parties, where FVU has been able to negotiate a fee, FVU will pass all applicable fees on to the Artist unless FVU negotiates otherwise with the artist in advance; For any exhibitions of the Work negotiated and/or facilitated by FVU with third parties, where FVU has been able to negotiate a fee, fees will be split 50:50 between FVU and the Artist unless FVU negotiates otherwise with the Artist in advance.

Privacy
 

The personal data you give us when submitting your application will be used to process your application for this opportunity by Film and Video Umbrella and will be shared with members of the selection panel. We will only contact you in connection to this application. Your personal data will be kept by Film and Video Umbrella for up to 10 years and will only be used internally for research, evaluation, reporting and marketing analysis for artist opportunities. It will not be passed on to anyone else. If you want to be removed from our database, you can email susanna@fvu.co.uk. You have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office should you wish to complain about how your information has been handled.

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FAQS

QUESTIONS ABOUT MAKING AN APPLICATION

Are there any costs involved in applying?

No. This opportunity is free to apply to.
 

What should I include in my five-minute showreel?

We suggest submitting a clip (or selection of clips on a single reel) of your past work that best represents your practice and/or your proposal, so that the selectors can easily gain an understanding of your existing skill within the medium. It could be one complete work, a clip, or reel of clips showcasing different works you have made, so long as together they don’t exceed five minutes. You may submit a five-minute section of a longer work, but please specify the timecode for the selectors to view. If no timecode is given we will watch the first five minutes of the work.

If you have not previously made moving-image work before, you can submit reference material for the proposed work that is not of your own making, but please make us aware that you have done so.

What is the fee/budget to be used for?

We anticipate that the £5,000 fee/budget will mostly pay for your time to work on the project, though you may also choose to use some of it to cover costs such as editing or animation software, or rights to use found material, as examples. It will be up to the artist to manage the budget, and to decide what they spend it on, though FVU can advise.

If I need more than the £5,000 offered to make my proposed work, can I bring additional finances to support the project, and will you support applications for works on which production has already begun?

No. We will not commission works that we believe cannot be made for £5,000 or less. We aim for parity between the ambition, scale and quality of commissioned works both in and between editions, so as to indicate to future applicants what can be achieved on this budget. More importantly, we do this so that the selection of the awardees cannot be swayed by the benefits or risks involved with the promise of or access to additional financial support. We do accept proposals on which research and development has already begun which may have benefitted from financial support. However we will not fund any work on which production has already begun. We do allow you to use footage that you have already shot, in the circumstance where you are using it in a completely different work than it has previously been used in, or footage that you have shot, but hadn’t intended to use in a work, or didn’t know how or what the footage would develop into when you shot it. But this is not an opportunity to provide funds to complete works that are already in production.  If you are unclear about what this means, please discuss with us in advance of applying.

Will you allow the proposed production to benefit from in-kind support?

Yes. We do allow projects to benefit from in-kind support. If you know you already have promises of in-kind support in order to realise the proposed work then it can be worth mentioning these in your application, as it can make a seemingly unaffordable or difficult to realise proposal more of a realistic commissioning candidate.

If I want to include footage in the new commission that I have already shot, can I do so?

Yes. So long as what you create with your existing footage is a very substantially different work to any that you have previously made.

If I want to work with found material will I need to clear rights to do so?

Yes. In most circumstances you will need to clear permission for use of found material with its creator/owner. In extremely limited circumstances you may be able to use the footage without doing so, under Fair Dealing law.

Does the film need to be within particular duration limitations?

No there aren’t any duration limitations. The length should be whatever is most appropriate for your idea. However, the more complex your work is to make the more time consuming and costly it can become, so please keep the £5K fee/budget in mind when writing your proposal and thinking about film length. A work made with a static camera and very little editing is likely to be able to be longer than a complex labour-intensive edit or animated work.

Does the proposal need to be for a single-screen work?

Yes. Due to its single-screen format, what we show on FVU Watch does need to be single-screen. However, you could choose to make a multi-screen work that contains all of the multiple-screens within a single-screen grid or other format.

QUESTIONS AROUND ACCESSIBILITY AND SUPPORT

Is there any support available to help make an application?

If you would like to talk through making an application in advance of applying you can email us at admin@fvu.co.uk to ask a question over email or make an appointment to speak to a member of the team over the phone or via video call.  Please note that the advice we give on making an application is on the eligibility and suitability of your proposal and will have no bearing on its assessment. You do not need to have spoken to an FVU member of staff before making an application. 

We can contribute up to £200 towards a fee for an Access Support Worker for applicants who need one. Please email admin@fvu.co.uk at least one working week before the deadline to discuss how we can help.
 

Can I submit my application as an audio or video recording instead of written?

Yes. If you would prefer to submit your application as an audio or video recording you can do so. The online application portal provides the opportunity for you to submit links to audio or video files containing your 400-word proposal, 300-word artist bio and the 100 words to define the start of your professional artistic practise. These audio or video recordings would be in addition to the five minutes of past moving image work that we ask everyone to submit. We will still ask you to complete contact details and a 50-word summary of your proposal in written form to assist the processing of your application. No assessment of the production quality of the audio or video recordings submitted as an alternative to these written sections will be made.
 

If I have a disability and/or specific access requirements, what support can be offered if my application is successful?

We particularly welcome applications from those with disabilities/access requirements.

If you already regularly use funds from the Department of Work and Pensions to support your Access to Work, please let us know this once you have been selected. If you do not already have this in place, then we maintain an Access Reserve to facilitate our work with artists with disabilities.

All awarded artists are invited to submit an ‘Access Rider’ to outline your specific access needs. This is useful at the beginning of the commissioning/production process, in providing us with information about what your needs are so that structures can be put in place to ensure that you have equal access to work.

QUESTIONS ABOUT ELIGIBILITY

Can artist duos or groups apply?

Yes, but unfortunately the fee/budget will not increase as a result.

Can I submit more than one application?

Only one application will be accepted per individual artist or collaborative group. You may submit an application as an individual artist, as well as a different application as a member of a collaborative group, providing the two practices are distinctly different.

If I have applied to FVU opportunities in the past, can I apply again?

Yes. We encourage applications from those who have applied to us in previous years, so long as you make a significantly adjusted proposal. Just because you might not have been successful once does not mean that we are not interested in your work. We have often commissioned artists who have applied to our calls for entries previously.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES WITH THE APPLICATION PORTAL

What happens if I experience a technical issue with the application portal?

We troubleshoot the application portal thoroughly. Nevertheless, from time to time people do report technical difficulties. If you experience a technical issue with the portal, please report it to admin@fvu.co.uk asap.

You may find this especially frustrating if it happens right before the deadline, therefore we strongly advise that you try to submit your application well in advance. We recommend drafting your application offline in advance of the deadline. Answers can then be pasted into the online form.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PROCESS AFTER SUBMISSION

What criteria will applications be assessed by?

Selectors will primarily be basing decisions on:

• The quality of the artist’s current practice, based on the examples of work submitted
• The quality of the artist’s proposed work
• The feasibility of the proposal – it must be realisable within the £5K fee/budget.

We also want to ensure that a diverse group of artists and range of practices and works are commissioned. We will be looking to commission:

• Artists with a formal arts education, to those with no formal arts or higher education background
• Artists from a wide range of demographics in particular those who are under-represented within the visual arts in the UK. This includes artists with disabilities or long-term health conditions, neurodivergent artists, artists from low-income backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ artists, artists from the Global Majority, and artists living outside of London.
• Artists working in a range of mediums, from animators through to those working with found material
• Artists of a range of ages
• Artists living and working across the UK

What does the selection process involve?

All applications will be individually reviewed by internal assessors at FVU. A longlist of approximately 20 applications will then be shared with the panel to review. Each of these will then be discussed between the panel, and three will be selected to commission.
 

When will I hear if I have been successful with my application?

We will aim to inform all applicants of the outcome of their application before the end of January 2025, though this may be extended if we receive more applications than we anticipate. Please do not contact us to enquire about the outcome of your application prior to the end of January 2025.
 

Will I get feedback on my application?

Regretfully, due to the high volume of applications that we receive to our calls for entries we are unable to provide individual feedback to applicants. 

QUESTIONS FOR IF YOU ARE SELECTED

If I am selected how long will I have to make the work?

We are very flexible on deadlines for these commissions. With the scale of the £5K fee/budget we expect that the commission can be made over an approximately two-three month period, while working on it part-time. Though you are free to spread the work out over a longer period if you need to. We anticipate all commissions being completed by December 2025.