The St Hugh’s Fellowship 2009

The St Hugh’s Fellowship is designed to help established arts practitioners and producers to develop their professional careers in the arts, and in doing so, to contribute their own knowledge and experience to the wider growth and dissemination of arts practice in the region.

Who may apply?

Applicants must be normally resident (main place of residence) and regularly working (full or part-time) in Lincolnshire (including North and North East Lincolnshire), East Riding of Yorkshire or City of Hull.

Applicants may be working as practitioners in any field of the arts, including theatre, dance, music, literature, visual and broadcast media, the fine and applied arts. They will have already established themselves as proven professionals in their field, in which they will have been working for a number of years. They will have achieved some public or professional recognition through performance, publication, broadcast or exhibition; or through their personal contribution to the development of arts practice in a successful arts organisation or service, (for example, as a director, curator or producer).

Applicants are likely to have had previous formal academic or vocational training, and to have achieved relevant formal qualifications; although proven professional experience will be the main criterion considered by the Trustees. The Fellowship is not intended to support early career development for those only recently qualified, or to fund recreational or other non-professional activity.

What is the Fellowship for?

The Fellowship is expected to act as a catalyst in stimulating and supporting an individual to spend time on a major project, or on personal research, or on advanced study, to enable them to develop their career through wider experience, enhanced skills, new stimuli, or specialised knowledge. The project, research or course of study will be designed by them to meet their specific career needs. Simply attending an established course, or taking advantage of a project designed by others, is unlikely to be sufficient in itself to merit the award of a Fellowship. The acquisition of a higher academic or vocational qualification may be one additional outcome of a Fellowship; but if so, it must be secondary to the main vocational objective put forward by the applicant.

Proposals should be for a substantial and sustained programme of work, to be carried out over a period of at least six months, or longer up to two years maximum, and may be full or part-time. The work may be carried out within the UK or overseas, or combine time spent in different locations. Proposals involving personal research or practical experience abroad will be welcomed.

An award could therefore contribute towards such costs as travel, subsistence away from home, materials, research costs and professional fees paid to recognised mentors or other distinguished practitioners as part of a project. Some contribution towards loss of earnings may be an acceptable use of part of the award for applicants currently dependent on their own business income, but the need for that support would have to be justified in the applicant’s submission.

Applicants will be expected to demonstrate their ability to plan and carry through a complex programme; to produce a realistic and balanced budget, drawing on other secured sources of funding; and to act as a dependable ambassador for the Foundation as a Fellowship-holder, throughout the period of the work.

A subsequent Fellowship Report will be required, in two parts. An Executive Summary must be provided, short enough (one to two pages maximum) for publication on the Foundation’s website. In addition, a more substantial printed report of between five and ten sides of A4 typed (with illustrations if relevant) must be provided, sufficiently bound to provide a permanent record of the Fellowship’s achievement.

What funding is available?

It is the Trustees’ intention to make a single award of up to £14,000 subject to the scale and scope of the successful proposal.

Click here for the 2009 Application Procedure