Currently 15 active visual and media arts grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in the UK. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
Subscribe: RSS feed · Calendar (.ics)
The Learning Through Making fund supports UK-based visual art organisations to bring opportunities for making and material exploration into their art education work. Freelands Foundation is looking for exploratory projects that embrace openness, collaboration, and iteration -- enabling organisations to work with materials in an expansive way, unpicking preconceptions about making and material literacy without predefined outcomes. ELIGIBLE ACTIVITIES: providing materials, transport, or access to expertise and facilities; action-research trials such as a new series of workshops or events developing material literacy; adding a making-focused element to existing activity. Projects may range from a few days to several months, but must take place between 1 January and 31 December 2027. AMOUNT: up to £25,000; funding provided no earlier than December 2026. ELIGIBILITY: UK-based visual art organisations run with a charitable purpose and for public benefit; eligible types include charities registered in England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland; exempt charities; galleries, museums, or organisations within a Local Authority or larger charitable body (e.g. universities); and Community Interest Companies or Community Benefit Societies meeting specific criteria (charitable purposes, asset lock, no dividend distribution, ability to segregate restricted funds). Organisations with a prior Freelands Foundation grant relationship are eligible; you may not apply for activity already funded by Freelands Foundation. Individuals are not eligible. HOW TO APPLY: download the Application Form, Application Guidance, and optional Access Form from freelandsfoundation.co.uk; email completed form to grants@freelandsfoundation.co.uk with subject line 'LTM Fund - Application'; one additional page of images or diagrams may be included. APPLICATION SUPPORT SESSIONS (online): 9 July 2026, 10:30am-12pm; 12 August 2026, 10:30am-12pm. KEY DATES: applications open 17 June 2026; close 11 September 2026 at 12pm; outcomes shared 23 November 2026.
The National Lottery Rural Engagement Arts Programme funds organisations to deliver arts activity in rural Northern Ireland, addressing isolation and social inclusion. It supports either a single one-off project or a multi-event public programme, making it usable for exhibitions, workshops, touring events and community-facing digital or media arts work. Grants range from GBP 500 to 10,000, covering artist fees, transport, materials, venue hire, accessibility support, volunteer expenses, evaluation, and equipment up to 50 percent of the request value. The deadline is Thursday 24 September 2026 at 12:00 noon, and the online system closes precisely at noon with no late or incomplete submissions accepted. TIMING RULE: funded activity must fall between 1 December 2026 and 30 November 2027, setting an effective earliest start date of roughly ten weeks after the deadline. Registered charities, formally constituted non-profit groups, local authorities and arts organisations are eligible, including bodies based outside Northern Ireland where the benefit accrues to rural NI residents. Consortium applications demonstrating partnership working are explicitly prioritised. The rural and community framing means creative-technology work qualifies only where framed for that audience.
Gasworks residency open call for an early-career contemporary visual artist based in East Africa. The eleven-week, fully funded residency runs at Gasworks in London from 7 April to 22 June 2027. Gasworks' residency programme supports professional development, cultural exchange and artistic experimentation, hosting up to twenty residencies a year; residencies are self-led, non-prescriptive and process-based, with artists expected to lead on the research and production of their own work while Gasworks provides administrative, pastoral and curatorial support during office hours. The residency includes studio visits with Gasworks staff, external curators, artists and educational groups, at least two individual studio visits with other artists, curators and arts professionals, networking opportunities, a dedicated residency page on the Gasworks website with a short video interview filmed and edited by Gasworks, and an Open Studio event and presentation of the work and research developed during the residency on 12 June 2027. ELIGIBILITY: early-career contemporary visual artists based in Burundi, the Chagos Archipelago, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the French Southern Territories, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Reunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania or Zambia only. Applicants should have at least a moderate level of spoken English and feel comfortable discussing their work in English. The residency is offered subject to approval of the visa application. Deadline 28 September 2026, 12:00 UTC. No fee.
Waag Futurelab invites artists, theatre makers, choreographers, dancers, game designers and other creative practitioners to engage directly with seven experimental generative AI Enablers being co-created with technologists and dance, theatre and gaming professionals. The call is an invitation into the development process: selected artists get access to the technologies, datasets, interfaces and assumptions that shape these systems while they are still being built. Rather than testing whether the systems work, artists are asked to interrogate why they work the way they do, who they are designed for, what forms of creativity they enable or constrain, and what assumptions about culture, intelligence, authorship, labour, bodies, audiences and society are embedded in them. Waag is looking for individuals and collectives willing to move beyond adoption into investigation, and welcomes proposals that are speculative, critical, poetic, provocative, humorous, performative, constructive or disruptive, including work that challenges, misuses, reimagines, hacks, subverts or plays with the tools, exposes hidden biases, questions environmental costs, or imagines alternative technological futures. THE SEVEN AI ENABLERS, each requiring an on-site visit to its technology partner: the Generic Procedural Content Generation Enabler (text-to-3D assets and avatars, CERTH, Greece); the Data-Driven Cultural Content Adaptation Enabler (audience-aware creative content ideation with ranked candidate ideas, CERTH, Greece); the Cross-Domain Audience Engagement Analytics Enabler (turning heterogeneous cultural participation data into interpretable engagement signals, The Audience Agency, Warrington, UK); the Dance Style Analysis and Generation Enabler (dance video into virtual 3D choreography, dissected into body, effort, shape and space components, Centre of Excellence for Research & Innovation, Cyprus); the Immersive Design Integration Enabler for Dance & Theatre (NLP-driven XR environments with speech-to-3D scene editing, Cyprus); the Music-to-Movement Translation Enabler (audio into a time-aligned feature set spanning genre classification, emotional valence-arousal analysis, rhythm extraction and latent-space projection, feeding motion generation, spatial audio and visual choreography, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece); and the Adaptive Narrative Enabler for Games & Theatre (an evolutionary AI trained on creator-written story elements that generates infinite story variations, explicitly rejecting LLMs because of their dependence on copyrighted or public-domain corpora that encode 19th and early 20th century sexism, racism and imperialism, CAUSA Creation, Austria). ELIGIBILITY: artists, designers, creative technologists, theatre makers, dancers, choreographers and game designers, as individuals or collectives; applicants must hold a European VAT number. An info session with live demonstrations of the AI Enablers runs 31 July 2026, 10:00 to 11:30 CEST (meeting ID 995 7016 2341). Applications go through Homerun using the official Application Template, uploaded as a PDF; read the Guide for Applicants, which contains the full Enabler descriptions, before applying. Questions: zoenie at waag dot org. The AI Enablers and this call are part of the Horizon Europe project HAMLET, which aims to make generative AI accessible to cultural organisations of all sizes. Closes 30 September 2026, 23:59 CEST. Free to apply.
The Music Growth Fund is Arts Council England's new investment programme for growth in new music, meaning original live performance, sound recording or musical work recently or newly created or performed by living UK-based artists and music creators. It sits inside the wider GBP 45 million Music Growth Package. WHO IT IS FOR: music festivals, music managers, music promoters, music publishers, record labels, recording studios, rehearsal spaces and grassroots music venues, plus established sector bodies and other sector support organisations that support them. Each applicant type has its own Applicant Specific Guidance on the Music Growth Package pages. IMPORTANT: this is business and organisational investment, not a grant for individual artists to make work. Individual artists, bands, producers and artist collectives should instead look at the separate Music Creators Growth Fund (GBP 10,000-20,000), whose guidance lands 1 September 2026 with the portal opening 1 October 2026. WHAT TO PROPOSE: how investment will be used to grow music businesses and/or the wider music industry, and enhance opportunities for artists and music creators, industry professionals, music fans and new audiences. Growth can mean increased reach, stronger business models, improved sustainability, skills development or expanded capacity, and is judged in the context of each applicant's own scale and ambitions. DECISION CRITERIA: potential for growth, effective use of funds, contribution to a fairer and more inclusive music industry, and contribution to a climate resilient music industry. BEFORE YOU START: you need an approved profile on the Arts Council grants management system before you can submit, so allow time for that. Arts Council reserves the right to change the programme, so check you are on the latest guidance. THIS STRAND: GBP 40,001 to GBP 100,000, with a GBP 2,000,000 annual budget for 2026/27 and a 50 percent cash match requirement, which is the main thing that will decide whether this strand is realistic for you. You must also upload a completed finance template as well as your most recent financial statement; sole traders may submit the finance template alone. ROUNDS FOR 2026/27 (GBP 1,000-40,000 strand): Round 1 opens 6 August and closes 3 September 2026, decision 28 October. Round 2 opens 4 September and closes 15 October 2026, decision 28 October. Round 3 opens 16 October and closes 26 November 2026, decision 3 February 2027. Round 4 opens 27 November 2026 and closes 7 January 2027, decision 9 March 2027. ROUNDS FOR THE GBP 40,001-100,000 strand: Round 1 opens 7 September and closes 1 October 2026, decision 30 November. Round 2 opens 23 November 2026 and closes 15 January 2027, decision 8 March 2027.
The Supporting Act Foundation's Artist Grant supports emerging artists from underrepresented groups whose practices involve collaborative, collective, or creative processes that incorporate or benefit their community, aiming to improve artists' living conditions, buy time for practice development, increase visibility, and build confidence. AWARD: 10 unrestricted grants of EUR 10,000, transferred in monthly installments of EUR 1,000. ELIGIBILITY: emerging artists with at least 2 and no more than 10 years of professional experience, born in or before 2005, who identify as belonging to an underrepresented group or as consistently facing systemic barriers to equal opportunities in the creative industries in their country; based in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, or the UK with a personal IBAN account there; with an up-to-date website or public social profile sharing their work. Applicants must outline how the grant will support their artistic development and help overcome economic, social, cultural, physical, or health-related barriers, and be willing to be an active ambassador for the TSAF Grantee Network. Former and current TSAF grantees are not eligible. DEADLINE: 1 October 2026, 11:00AM CET.
The Supporting Act Foundation's Impact Grant empowers arts-focused nonprofits that provide non-financial support to emerging artists from underrepresented groups, aligned with TSAF's aims: improving artists' living conditions, buying time for practice development, increasing visibility, and building confidence. AWARD: 10 unrestricted grants of EUR 25,000 per year over two years (EUR 50,000 total per organization). ELIGIBILITY: registered as a nonprofit arts organization between 2016 and 2024 in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, or the UK (nonprofits registered elsewhere may apply with a letter of intent from a fiscal host registered in one of those countries); an IBAN bank account in the organization's or fiscal host's name; total annual expenditure between EUR 50,000 and 300,000 in the current fiscal year; and an updated website with public evidence of active projects providing non-financial support to underrepresented emerging artists. Not for individuals, commercial organizations, project proposals, or current or past TSAF grantees; previously unsuccessful applicants may reapply. TIMELINE: call opens 1 September 2026; review October; notifications late October; final review of shortlisted applicants November; announcement and first installment January 2027. DEADLINE: 1 October 2026, 11:00AM CET.
Nordic Currents is a new international culture initiative from the Nordic Council of Ministers, running 2027-2028, that invites cultural organisations in European countries neighbouring the Nordic region to join forces with Nordic partners on projects that move audiences, deepen relationships and create lasting connections. Trust, openness, artistic freedom and democratic values are named as its core. The stated aims are to showcase the richness and quality of contemporary Nordic culture and art in neighbouring European countries and to build long-term collaborations between Nordic and European actors. WHO CAN APPLY: established organisations based in European countries neighbouring the Nordic region, primarily Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. Eligible applicant types are cultural organisations, institutions, promoters, festivals and producers, as well as embassies and diplomatic missions working in cooperation with arts and culture stakeholders. Every application must have at least two partners from different Nordic countries who stay active throughout the project. WHERE: in a single country or as a cooperation across several countries, but activities must primarily take place in the country where the applying organisation is based; if several European partners outside the Nordic region are involved, activities may also be organised in their countries. Emphasis goes to projects in regions and countries with existing local interest in Nordic art and culture, where Nordic and local partners can build long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations. WHAT THE PROJECT MUST INCLUDE: both artistic programmes and events accessible to local audiences, and platforms for professional exchange and sector development. Public cultural events can be festivals, programmes, series or other curated formats, standalone or attached to existing structures. Projects must also include network-building, knowledge sharing and other forms of sector development. Programming must include representation from all the Nordic countries, with artists and cultural actors from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Aland. Projects must take place between 1 June 2027 and 1 June 2028. FUNDING: applications may request EUR 100,000 to EUR 800,000; the total pool is EUR 800,000, so between one and eight proposals will be successful. Co-financing through local, national or other funding sources is a prerequisite for eligibility. HOW TO APPLY: proposals are submitted in English through an online portal open only between 1 October and 1 November 2026. ASSESSMENT: all eligible proposals go to a professional committee and expert reviewers in the corresponding art fields, judged on artistic quality, connection to the Nordic region, relevance to the artistic fields covered, how the concept incorporates democratic values such as openness, trust and artistic freedom, capacity to implement the collaboration, public appeal for the intended audiences, public accessibility, potential for long-term impact and future collaboration, and organisational and financial capacity. Selected projects are publicly announced in May 2027.
The Jerwood Foundation makes grants to UK organisations for public-facing arts activity across theatre, music, dance, visual arts and literature, including artist development programmes, commissions, residencies and projects involving the Jerwood Collection. Awards have historically gone as high as GBP 200,000, though the Foundation states most grants are much smaller. Applications are single-stage: a written proposal of no more than 10 sides of A4 excluding financial statements, sent by email to info@jerwood.org or by post, and it must include a summary sheet giving location, amount requested, timeline and audience figures. Applications missing that summary sheet are rejected automatically. The March 2026 deadline has passed; the next round opens 3 February 2027 at 9am and closes 17 March 2027 at 2pm, with decisions on 28 April 2027 and all applicants notified by 11 May 2027. TIMING RULE: activity funded in that round must start or open to the public between 1 July 2027 and 30 June 2028, so there is a long lead time and retrospective funding is impossible. Grants to individuals are not made, so artists must be supported through a host organisation. Core costs and capital work are explicitly out of scope, which makes this a good fit for discrete festivals, exhibitions and public programmes.
The National Lottery Open Fund for Organisations is Creative Scotland's main open-access grant for constituted arts, creative and cultural organisations, and it is genuinely rolling with no deadlines. It supports a specific one-off project or production, creative research and development, or a longer-term programme of work, and can also fund business sustainability and organisational development costs. Eligible organisations can apply for GBP 1,000 to 100,000 for projects lasting up to 18 months. TIMING RULES: decision lag is banded by request size, with GBP 1,000 to 20,000 decided within 10 weeks and GBP 20,000 to 100,000 within 14 weeks. The start date must be after the decision date, and the guidance recommends allowing a further 2 to 4 weeks for funding agreements and first payment. Critically for festivals, applicants are barred from starting activity, including advertising events or issuing calls for collaborators, before funding is confirmed, so a public programme should be planned to start roughly 12 to 18 weeks after submission. Only one application may be in assessment at any time. Non-UK organisations can be involved but cannot lead. Current Regularly Funded and Multi-Year Funded Organisations are excluded.
Community-led Art and Creativity sits within Esmee Fairbairn's Creative, Confident Communities aim and is one of the Foundation's two arts-related priorities. It funds work where local people and local artists lead the creative and cultural activity in a place, emphasising cross-sector collaboration that delivers social, environmental and economic benefit alongside artistic outcomes. Cited examples include the Migration Museum's People's Panel, B Arts in Stoke and WeCanMake's Festival of Making Together, which confirms festivals and public programmes are in scope where genuinely community-directed. Applications are rolling with no deadlines, starting with an eligibility quiz and an expression of interest. The minimum grant is GBP 30,000 with no upper limit, and most awards run three to five years covering core or project costs including salaries and overheads. Applicants need at least GBP 100,000 annual turnover in the latest accounts and a formal constitution, charitable or non-charitable so long as the work is charitable. This is highly competitive: in 2025 only around 5 percent of initial expressions of interest converted into funded grants, so long-term systems-change framing matters more than the individual event. Esmee's other arts priority, Arts and Creativity Making Change, is currently closed.
The Arts-based Learning Fund supports sustained partnerships between arts and cultural organisations and state-funded educational settings so that arts-based approaches become embedded in how young people learn. Grants run GBP 30,000 to 300,000 over one to four years, with a ceiling of GBP 100,000 in any single year, and can cover both project delivery and a fair share of the applicant's core costs. Applicants must be arts and cultural organisations (charities, community organisations, social enterprises, not-for-profits) applying in partnership with at least one state-funded educational setting. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis with no deadlines; an optional enquiry call with a grants manager is encouraged before applying. The process is two-stage: an initial online application, then, if shortlisted, further information plus a phone or video conversation, with a final decision by a grants panel. TIMING RULE: applicants should expect a response within about four months, and successful applicants should allow roughly six months from application to receiving funds, so projects should not be planned to start sooner than that. The Foundation explicitly encourages applications from organisations led by people most impacted by racism, ableism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. IMPORTANT: this is the only Paul Hamlyn arts route open to new applicants in 2026, since the main Arts Fund is suspended to new applications until at least April 2027.
The BFI Doc Society Features Production Fund (delivered via BFI with Doc Society as delegate partner) supports UK filmmakers producing non-fiction feature films intended for theatrical release. Two strands: Directions (first- or second-time directors) and Momentum (established talent). AMOUNT: up to £150,000 non-recoupable grant (the total Doc Society contribution per project cannot exceed £150,000). ELIGIBILITY: UK-based filmmakers, both emerging and established directors; experienced and debut producers eligible; projects must meet at least three of six stated priorities: equity/diversity, audience impact, talent development, creative risk, UK-wide access, and environmental sustainability. PROCESS: two-stage — submit an Expression of Interest, then a Full Application if invited. Rolling intake year-round. Opened May 2026. APPLY via BFI Doc Society website. Contact: hellobfi@docsociety.org.
Hypha Studios matches artists with free meanwhile-use spaces across London and the UK. Speculative exhibition proposals are accepted on a rolling basis and kept on file until a suitable space opens. No geographic restriction is stated, but applicants practically need to be able to install and attend in the UK.
Reimagining Ghana is a UK-Ghana arts project by Forty-Four Words in collaboration with writer Ekow Barnes, supported by the UK Government and Arts Council England, exploring how contemporary creative practice can respond to ideas of Ghanaian identity, memory and representation. Having begun with commissioned non-fiction essays on the question What is Ghana?, the project now commissions three visual artists to create new work informed by research, dialogue and public engagement, running until Summer 2027 with public events in London and Accra. COMMISSION: GBP 2,500 artist fee per artist, a materials budget, curatorial and research support, and dialogue with peers and project collaborators; the commission fee, timeline and core deliverables are guaranteed even as the research evolves. ELIGIBILITY: artists aged 18+ of Ghanaian heritage, available throughout the project period, working across visual arts; the team looks for curiosity, thoughtful engagement with identity, memory, history, place and representation, and openness to collaboration. APPLY via the Google Form with an artist statement, motivation, outline of interests, and one PDF with CV and portfolio (minimum four works). The deadline is rolling; reviewing began 17 August 2026, so early application is advised.