North East Open Call

*Please note this Open Call has now closed

Artists shortlisted for Round 2 will be notified by the end of April. We aim to give feedback to every artist who has applied to Round 1. All artists should receive feedback by the end of April.

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From 26th September - 5th October 2024 the North East's largest annual contemporary art festival returns. Middlesbrough Art Week (MAW) continues to bring exciting contemporary art to Middlesbrough. For MAW24 we are seeking artist proposals for the North East Open Call (NEOC). We are sharing our thinking behind the wider MAW 2024 programme below, but as artists ourselves, we understand that arts practices are wide-ranging and do not always fit neatly into boxes. In the spirit of this, we do not expect proposals to be a direct response to ideas or themes. You do not need to crowbar your practice into this open call. There is no specific medium/ media criterion, artists make work, we want to show it! 

MAW are seeking applications for existing work by artists and creatives either based in the North East or who have a connection to the area for an exhibition that forms part of MAW24. The selected artists will show their work in a group exhibition or in appropriate interventions across Middlesbrough. The selection will be made by Penny Payne, NEOC Curator & NEOC Alumni Artist, curators from MAW, and additional selectors tbc. (Past selectors have included Helen Welford, Exhibition and Collection Curator (MIMA), Chris Clarke, Senior Curator (The Glucksman Museum, Ireland), Robin Klassnik, Director, (Matt’s Gallery, London)

IN THE NOW AND THE FAR

The title for this year’s festival, IN THE NOW AND THE FAR, seeks to negotiate the overlap and differences between cultural production and political action. Who has the right to take action? What does art & social practice look like? When is the moment and who is in the room? We are thinking about the attitudes, frameworks and timescales that inform the way that we make and share work, and in turn, how this helps us reimagine the communities we live in. We are also considering how uneven distribution (of power, time, resource, capacity) has shaped social movements of the past, and how this in turn might act as the imaginative scaffold for the future.

We have chosen the title ‘IN THE NOW AND THE FAR’ to explore what unfolds as we gather energy to take action, a tension that exists between the hope required to imagine different futures, and the urgent demands of social justice to address past and present inequity. At its heart will be programmes to support artistic practice in the North East and to join up conversations and actions towards sustaining these voices long-term. In a year of political elections near and far, we will also seek to amplify voices that have been underrepresented historically, to expand our work with and by communities across the wider North East region, to reflect on and promote the creative spirit needed to reconfigure our relationships in the now and for the future so we can better stay (and play) with the trouble.

Middlesbrough Art Week was born in 2017 as an artist-led festival powered by The Auxiliary Project Space, a small growing team of artists, curators and coordinators, and fuelled by wide reaching partnerships. MAW supports artist ecologies in the North East, connecting artistic practice and ideas with like-minded peers nationally and internationally, and is committed to practice and not just preach principles of fair work and social justice.

Applications now open
Artist Fee: £500*

*Successful artists will receive £500