Artistic research
We fund artistic research because creative practice is itself a form of ecological action, challenging who gets to speak, know, and imagine. Artistic research can create new ways of knowing, being with, acting in, and dreaming for the world.
Our artistic research fund aims to:
- provide support for artists who have been structurally disadvantaged in arts funding.
- promote equity and plurality in artistic research
- support the intrinsic value of artistic practice within ecological justice
- promote ecological knowledge and action that foregrounds care, connection, and imagination
We seek to fund artistic research that might include:
- new frameworks that disrupt and offer alternatives to current, exploitative models
- work that engages more-than-human perspectives
- workshops, meetings, events, actions, interventions
- lens-based work, sound, publications, performances, textiles, digital works, bio art, site-specific works, installations, land-based practices, archival practices
- socially engaged practices, organising and solidarity-building
- speculation, fiction and world-building.
We support research at any pace, in recognition that illness, disability, fatigue, and discrimination affect how and when people are able to work.
We recognise that this work involves creative and emotional risk and takes skill and labour. That is part of why our funding allows artists to spend grant money on rent, income, and self-care – and why it is not tied to fixed outputs or outcomes.
We are committed to centering under-represented voices, funding artists whose lived experiences and ways of knowing have been historically excluded from both arts funding and ecological research.
We aim to address a funding gap in the arts by providing grants to artists in financial hardship or on low incomes, especially artists from global majority backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ artists, disabled artists, or artists experiencing chronic illness. Our fund is open to all art disciplines and career stages. We do not make our grants conditional on achieving predetermined outputs and outcomes. Our funding is offered alongside a cohort-based support system , where artists are invited to learn from and be in dialogue with each other.
Afield will be launching the first round of its arts grants in London in early 2027.