THE BREAK NEW GROUND BURSARY APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN!

BREAK NEW GROUND: A CREATION BURSARY FOR FUTURE LIVE PERFORMANCE

FRINGE LAB are delighted to be back with Break New Ground: A Creation Bursary for Future Live Performance. This bursary will support an artist who has not led a project at Dublin Fringe Festival before towards developing an ambitious new idea for live performance. 

We want you to take a bet on your own big ideas and we know doing that can require a long lead in time, individual mentorship and financial support. This bursary will provide tailored support towards the creation of a project for a future Dublin Fringe Festival debut with a €4750 bursary, a €750 mentorship allocation and in-kind supports to the value of €2000 including one-on-one industry mentoring, network-building, studio space, financial advice and a set of supports from the Dublin Fringe Festival team.

We want to support the development of bold work, radical art-forms and ambitious ideas. We’re searching for artists who want to make work that blends disciplines; who want to expand their practice to be more experimental or more theatrical depending on their current practice. We champion interdisciplinarity and support projects and approaches that otherwise might fall through the cracks. We encourage new artists, and artists working professionally in one genre that want to try something new to apply. We’re especially interested in supporting artists whose backgrounds are in music, spoken word, club, live art, comedy, installation, cabaret, community building, and circus.

This bursary is to support the development of an idea for a new, full length live performance work.  The bursary recipients will be invited to present their work in a future edition of Dublin Fringe Festival, from 2025 onwards. 

The 2024 recipient of this bursary was Bill Harris who presented his work ACCESSOR in this year’s Festival. The 2023 recipients of this bursary were Kate Dunne with her work Sl(t)áinte and Alessandra Azeviche with her work Terra, which were presented to audience and critical acclaim in the 2023 and 2024 Festivals respectively. This year one bursary will be awarded.

If you’re interested in making an application and would like to chat with Dublin Fringe first, please set up a meeting with the Programme & Artistic Support Coordinator, Niamh Murtagh here.

Criteria for selection: 

• A contemporary, consequent, and singular idea for a future live performance
• Demonstration of how the project will be radical in form, thematic approach or audience engagement
• A clear vision for how this bursary will support the creation of your project
• Skill, potential and experience as a contemporary performance maker 
• We particularly welcome applications from artists who are typically under-represented in the arts community

Who should apply? 

• Artists who want to create their first full-length, completed live performance work
• Artists working in an interdisciplinary medium OR who are working professionally in one genre and want to try something new
• Early career artists from any performance discipline
• Artists with an experimental practice and a fresh approach to performance medium and style 
• Irish artists or artists based in Ireland 
• Practicing artists, not currently in full-time education

Please note: Artists who have been the lead artist of a show at a past edition of Dublin Fringe Festival are not eligible to apply for this bursary. This opportunity is for artists working towards leading the creation of a full-length performance at the festival for the first time.

This bursary is for the creation of a live performance, including areas such as: 

• Writing, composing, creating, devising, etc. 
• Artist fees
• Mentorship
• Rehearsal costs
• Show & company marketing materials

What you get from Dublin Fringe Festival:

• €4250 bursary to support the creation of the work
• €750 mentorship allocation to connect and work with a mentor
• 2 weeks in FRINGE LAB Studio 1
• 1 week in our FRINGE LAB private office space, the Workstation
• Mentorship sessions with the Dublin Fringe team covering practical (budgeting, application advice, fundraising, marketing) and artistic (show & practice development)
• Use of FRINGE LAB equipment
• An invitation to present the completed work at a future edition of Dublin Fringe Festival

What we’ll ask of bursary recipients:

• Develop your big idea
• Meet with Dublin Fringe Festival’s Artistic Team to talk about your brilliant idea, as well as other departments where needed 
• Work with the Programme & Artistic Support Coordinator Niamh Murtagh to identify a potential mentor
• Share a short written/ video reflection about your discoveries to share with the Dublin Fringe Festival community after this development period

To apply you will need:  

• A proposal for a brand-new piece of contemporary performance (700 words max) 
• A brief overview of how this bursary will benefit your ability to create the work, including timeline and scope of work that you’ll undertake (375 words max) 
• A demonstration of how this idea is bold in form, thematic approach and/or audience engagement (375 words max) 
• Work sample: something that gives us an idea of the project, this can be performance footage, a script, recorded tracks, images, etc. Whatever you think will let us see your vision
• Artist Information including biography and summary of past work (include links to video and images) (500 words max) 

Deadline for applications is 10am on Friday 8th November 2024, we will reach out to shortlisted candidates shortly afterwards with next steps.  Offers will be communicated by Friday 29th November 2024. 

You can apply here - Application Form.

Dublin Fringe Festival are committed to creating a diverse programme of work and we welcome applications from artists of all gender identities, nationalities, races, cultural backgrounds, ages, religions, languages, different abilities, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses or geographic regions. If you would like to speak with us about any barriers to access you may be facing, please do so and we will work to remove them. You can contact our Programme & Artistic Support Coordinator Niamh Murtagh to discuss.