Audience Engagement Grants

Posted by on February 27, 2011

Open Society Documentary Photography Project Invites Proposals for Audience Engagement Grants
Deadline: May 13, 2011

The Open Society Foundations’ Documentary Photography Project is offering a grant to support alternative models for presenting and disseminating documentary photography to the public. The Audience Engagement Grant (formerly called the Distribution Grant) supports photographers who take an existing body of work on a social justice or human rights issue and devise an innovative way of using that work as a catalyst for social change.

The program seeks to fund well-designed projects that inspire audiences visually and create meaningful interactions with photographic content. Projects should combine existing bodies of work with programming or tools that give viewers a deeper, more nuanced understanding of issues and empower them to participate in the process of improving their own or others’ realities. Projects should also include a partnership between a photographer and an organization that combines expertise in documentary photography with experience working on the topic or community the project addresses.

Preference will be given, but not limited, to projects that address issues and geographical areas of concern to the Open Society Foundations.

Previously funded projects include, among others, exhibitions; photography in the public sphere; community-informed, locally-based exhibitions; slideshows and presentations; discussions and workshops; educational tools; visual resources; archives; and new media.

Five to eight grants of $5,000 to $30,000 each will be awarded. Grant funds cannot be used to shoot new imagery.

Applicants are invited to submit optional Letters of Intent by March 11, 2011. The required online application is due by May 13, 2011. (Please note: the online application system will not be available until February 1, 2011.)

The online application packet, including grant program guidelines, an FAQ, and examples of previously funded projects, is available at the Open Society Foundations Web site.

http://www.soros.org/initiatives/photography/news/call-for-proposals-audience-engagement-20110104