Currently 3 active design grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in Remote (work-from-anywhere). 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.
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A research fellowship from Impart, an online platform building accessible resources on South Asia's art histories, in collaboration with Nalli Silks, a heritage textile brand established in 1928. The programme has supported two research projects a year since 2024-25; for the 2027-28 cycle two fellowships are awarded, each carrying a grant of up to INR 5.5 lakhs for one year of independent research and project development. AREAS OF FOCUS: underexplored textile-related histories, practices and traditions across South Asia. Any textile-centric subject may be proposed; the call particularly encourages textiles in religious, literary, liturgical and mythological contexts; the environmental impact of textile production and consumption; endangered or disappearing textile traditions; critical perspectives on textile revivalism, digitisation, archives and material afterlives; labour in textile production with attention to caste, class and gender; relationships between textiles and other cultural forms including storytelling, poetry, music, architecture and material culture; techniques, technologies and tools tied to specific traditions; South Asian textiles within the contemporary global design economy; intellectual property, ownership and cultural rights; and socio-cultural perspectives on the relationship between handmade and industrial textiles. ELIGIBILITY: open to anyone aged 18 or over residing anywhere in the world, provided the project engages with textile practices in the wider South Asia region (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet). Early- and mid-career researchers, designers, archivists, journalists, writers, educators, practitioners, collectives and small organisations are all welcome, and collaborative projects are permitted provided co-creators are credited and listed in the application. Both new and ongoing projects are eligible, but applicants must specify which part of the project the grant will develop and disclose any current or previous funding from other organisations. SUPPORTED FORMATS: journalistic inquiry, documentary film, archive activation, practice-based research, archive generation, digitisation and documentation initiatives, and exhibition or book projects. DELIVERABLES: a comprehensive project report at the end of the grant period; a research dossier developed from that report in collaboration with Impart, presenting key questions and findings and hosted on Impart's website for public benefit; and a set of final project outputs, which may be audio-visual (interviews, short films), visual essays (photographic or process-based documentation), written pieces (essays, features, interviews) or curatorial work (exhibition or digital curation). Fellows also take part in periodic check-ins and submit progress reports. Copyright is settled case by case, but all final outputs must be made openly and freely accessible to the public. APPLICATION: a Google Form structured as a full project proposal, plus a project budget (percentage-based allocation is acceptable, but be as specific as possible), a project timeline for the one-year period with key phases, activities and milestones, and a single supporting PDF containing an up-to-date CV, selected work samples, and up to two letters of support or recommendation. The form is in English; applicants who would prefer another language are invited to write to Impart to arrange an alternative. NOTE: the fellowship has a strict no-tolerance policy on the use of AI or LLMs in the application form or any submitted materials, and any violation results in rejection. KEY DATES: applications close 31 August 2026; awardees notified December 2026; fellowships run January to December 2027. No individual feedback is given on unsuccessful applications.
Playlab is a nonprofit building public infrastructure for educational AI, equipping communities to create AI tools that reflect their own needs and values; more than 60,000 educators have published apps on the platform. Its premise is that AI is a new design material that should be shaped by many, and that educators should be designers of AI systems rather than end users of someone else's. THE ROLE: visual communication designers own the brand and the surfaces where people encounter and build with it, shaping how educators learn about AI and gain the confidence to tinker with it, and making sophisticated ideas legible without flattening them. Work spans brand expression, storytelling, data and information design, motion, interface and print, taken from concept through produced work and shipped as reusable systems. The job includes getting close to the people using Playlab and the contexts they work in, and helping collect and share their stories. WHAT THEY LOOK FOR: craft that is production-grade with a clear point of view and good judgement about when to ship fast versus slow down; narrative sense, meaning well-reasoned positions on how Playlab tells its story and the ability to turn complex systems into intuitive visuals that stay true to their depth; initiative on fuzzy problems, from defining the space to shipped work, thinking ahead to dependencies and second-order questions; technical fluency across print, web and motion, building with and on AI as a creative material and curating tooling and workflows; and taste, a distinct visual voice with the restraint to leave a rough edge when it serves the work. FIT: at least 5 years' experience with a strong graphic design foundation, a home base in visual communication (brand, editorial, campaign, web) and a track record in at least one other design discipline; able to lead design on owned projects while collaborating across the team; broad knowledge of creative tools and workflows including AI-leveraged ones; genuine interest in learning environments and the people in them; and strength as a producer comfortable owning the last mile to production. BONUS: education or edtech experience, designing creative tech, and a love of creative side quests. The posting explicitly encourages applications from people who do not meet every listed qualification. Culturally the organisation describes itself as sitting between a startup and an R&D lab, with nonprofit governance intended to keep incentives tied to teaching and learning rather than growth.
Playlab is a nonprofit building public infrastructure for educational AI, with more than 60,000 educators publishing apps on its platform. Designers there are responsible first for researching, prototyping and implementing interaction patterns that let educators be makers of technology rather than recipients of someone else's system, then for shaping how educators learn about AI and gain confidence to tinker with it, and finally for the storytelling that carries the work into the world. The two standing questions the role works on: how to expand and deepen what educators can create with AI, and how to lower the floor for who can create and how easily AI systems can be meaningfully deployed in real educational contexts. THE ROLE: as Senior Product Designer you own the design of Playlab's surfaces from prototype through shipped product. WHAT THEY LOOK FOR: craft that is production-grade with a clear point of view, and instincts for when to ship fast versus slow down; product sense grounded in staying close to the problems Playlab is solving, with the ability to hold unresolved questions and keep moving; initiative on fuzzy goals, defining the design space, gathering context and driving through prototyping to a shipped solution while bringing leadership along; technical fluency, building with and on AI, judging what is worth building, and curating custom tooling; and taste across visual, interaction and communication design. FIT: at least 5 years as a strong design generalist with a home base in product design and a track record in another design discipline; able to lead design on owned projects while collaborating across the team; broad knowledge of creative and AI-leveraged tools; interest in learning environments and the people who create them; and comfort getting technical with engineers, possibly pushing code. BONUS: education or edtech experience, designing creative tech, and a love of creative side quests. The posting explicitly encourages applications from people who do not meet every listed qualification. The organisation describes itself as sitting between a startup and an R&D lab, with nonprofit governance keeping incentives aligned to teaching and learning rather than growth.