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£50,000 prize fund. £100,000 worth of business support. 5 winners. The Deutsche Bank is working with MeWe360 to relaunch (DBACE) (Deutsche Bank Awards for Creative Entrepreneurs). In 2019, they are seeking and supporting creative entrepreneurs between the ages of 18-30 who are driven by a mission to build and sustain social value through their enterprise. #PositiveImpact

Entries welcome from artists, designers, architects and makers, at all stages of their careers, currently resident in the UK. 1st Prize: £3k, 2nd Prize: £1k and Student Prize: £1k. This year’s prize coincides with the bicentenary of Ruskin’s birth. 

Film London, Arts Council England and The Fenton Arts Trust present The FLAMIN Fellowship, a major new scheme for early career artist filmmakers living in England. Part of Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), the Fellowship aims to support the most exciting, innovative and challenging moving image practices from filmmakers at the early stages of their careers, with development and funding for new work.

Open to all UK undergraduate Fine Art students who are in their final year of study, graduating in Summer 2019. The Woon Foundation very generously funds an open call shortlist exhibition, including three major prizes each year to the total value of £40,000. Deadline: Monday 1 April 2019.

The Duplicate Artist Publishing Fair will take place from 3-4 May 2019 at Eastside Projects, Birmingham. The fair will showcase a broad range of independent publications, zines, comics and artists’ books. Applications are welcome from collective and individual self-publishers from the UK and beyond. Table space is £15 per day (or £20 for both days), everyone will get half a 6ft trestle table. Deadline: Friday 22 March 2019.

Submissions can now be entered by Outside In artists for the touring exhibition ‘Hard Wired’. The selected artwork will tour around four libraries in North Yorkshire, East Riding of Yorkshire and Lancashire as part of a project run by Chrysalis Arts Development called Art Unpacked.

Outside In is looking for a highly motivated and proactive regional artist development officer to join the award-winning charity.  The successful candidate, who will be based at Compton Verney, will work across the Midlands region and work closely with the Outside In team to proactively develop and manage the delivery of the Artist Development Programme in the area.

Artcore is an international centre for contemporary art and creativity that is based in Derby, UK, and is home to a gallery, studios, work spaces and a craft shop. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced Senior Manager to join the core team. The individual will be responsible for ensuring that Artcore is delivering across our 4 core strands and to look at ways to sustain and increase Artcore’s services and earned income.

The role of Festival Manager at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) is a key senior position that works closely with the Festival Director to plan the day-to-day operations, programme delivery and long-term development of the organisation.

Margate NOW is the sixth Margate Festival - an ambitious, cross-artform festival; an inclusive and egalitarian programme rooted in Margate. Celebrating an extraordinary range of artists it will animate unusual spaces and is conceived as a journey through town creating a sense of curiosity and buzz around landmark locations and the current moment.  

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Emma Cousin, Jeremy Deller, Heather and Ivan Morison, Peter Liversidge, Jesse Wine and Sarah Woodfine, are among 30 prominent and emerging contemporary artists donating unique artwork to Milton Keynes Arts Centre’s online charity auction, where each is responding to a ceramic plate. Money raised from the auction will support the delivery of a project collaborating with a young offenders group based in Milton Keynes. The project will see young people get hands on in Milton Keynes Arts Centre’s specialist ceramic studio, making personalised ceramic ware.

The new MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, designed by 6a architects, opened to the public on 16 March 2019.

Working with organisations, photographers, community groups, academics and curators from across the country, the Open Eye Gallery are building a new network to discuss and accelerate the practice of socially engaged photography. In the spirit of social practice, the network will be shaped collaboratively by its users, beginning with a quick survey to gauge how the network can be as useful as it can be. We would appreciate it if anyone interested in joining could take some time to fill it in. The network is open — join below by signing up to the mailing list.

Published in January, a new study by TBR commissioned by the Arts Council concludes that portfolio careers are the norm among artists in a visual artists’ constituency clearly dominated by women. Income levels remain unacceptably low overall and artists’ livelihoods are over-reliant on earnings from work other than art practice. Notably, however like their counterparts in other arts professional and creative industry spheres, it is female artists who experience the greatest barriers to sustaining of art practices over a life-time and are earning less from their art practice than males. Read the research reports including Arts Council’s response here. 

Visual Arts South West (VASW) is pleased to announce the appointment of Paula Orrell to the role of Network Manager. Paula will take up the position in April 2019. 

CVAN celebrates the many successes of our strongly embedded regional base delivering fantastic support to arts organisations through our regional networks but we also need to draw together and do more to promote our interests as a sector overall. So through the coming year CVAN will be looking at how we can work better together as a national network, how we innovate, how we engage across sectors and in creative partnerships regionally, nationally, and internationally, and how we promote diversity in the visual arts.

Recently, Alistair Hill, Brighton and Hove City Council’s Director of Public Health, has produced The Art of Good Health, a report that focuses on the contribution that the arts make to the health of the city’s residents. In his foreword he reflects on the question “should we look closer at the role of arts in health?”:

Welcome to the last Director’s blog for 2018 and our very best wishes to CVAN regional networks and the visual arts sector. Time to banish the gloom and spice the wine!

Let's start with a bit of seasonal roundup cheer. The British painter, Jenny Saville, became the most expensive living female artist in October when Propped (1992) sold for £8.25m (£9.5m with fees) at Sotheby's in London according to the 2018 roundup in The Art Newspaper but her success was drowned out by a shredder! Congratulations also to Charlotte Prodger’s Turner Prize-winning exploration of queer identity, language, technology and time. CVAN celebrates our truly stellar female artists and looks forward to a New Year of innovation and diversity in the visual arts and continued international cooperation…