436 Caribbean creatives vie for CATAPULT grant

On January 21, the application window for the US$150,000 CATAPULT Arts Grant closed, seeing a total of 436 creatives from 23 Caribbean countries applying for funding.

The grant, now in its second year, is a joint initiative of Kingston Creative, the American Friends of Jamaica, and the Open Society Foundation. It seeks to support 300 Caribbean creatives through COVID-19 relief grants worth US$500, intended to mitigate the impact of the lockdowns on their livelihoods.

The applicants will go through a rigorous evaluation process, led by a panel of independent jurors from the region, to select the best applicants.

The jurors are Ana Maria Hernandez, an independent art historian, curator and founder of Platforma Aruba; Holly Byone, an independent curator, writer, artist, spiritualist and founder of ARC Magazine from St Vincent & the Grenadines; Juan Francisco Pardo, an award-winning Aruban film-maker known for films such as Brackish Water (2015); Natalie Urquhart, the director and chief curator of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands; Nicholas Laughlin, editor of The Caribbean Review of Books, Caribbean Beat and the author of the poetry book The Strange Years of My Life.

From Jamaica are Sara Shabaka, design lecturer at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and creative director at Coen Shabaka Design, and Simone Harris, founder of 360 ARTISTS, an arts and entertainment management consultancy that provides business development and music publishing services to emerging and established artistes.

A unique feature of this grant is that all applicants will be added to the Caribbean Creative Network, an open artist directory that the public can access to find, hire and easily partner with Caribbean creatives for international and local projects.

“We are really excited about the judging process, as we are confident that this panel of talented professionals will pick the best Caribbean creatives for the grant,” said Khadijah Chang, Kingston Creative project manager.

“The database will undoubtedly create more access to markets and employment, so we are really looking forward to seeing the impact that CATAPULT will have for the creative community across the region,” she added.