A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of introducing our new Practical Intervention Fund, and in case that wasn’t exciting enough, I now have another brilliant opportunity to tell you about.

This one’s called the Young Artists Development Programme, and it’ll aim to do exactly what it says on the tin: help to develop young artists and their practice.

Last May I finished doing a degree in photography at the University for the Creative Arts. I know that it’s difficult to be an artist at the best of times – but especially when there’s a global pandemic! Having a career as an artist is exciting, but also challenging, and it can be tricky to know where to start. It can be even harder if you’re a disabled artist who has to spend time and energy dealing with barriers your non-disabled peers don’t experience. We want the Young Artists Development Programme to help with that.

The programme will be able to support up to 10 young disabled artists, aged between 14-26, who are at the beginning of their careers. Each artist will receive a fee to create a project. The work they produce will be shared on the Touretteshero website, and each artist will be invited to write a short blog post about themselves and their work.

Another great thing about the programme is the brief! We want the Young Artists Development Programme to support creativity, imagination and artistic experimentation. This means that we’ll consider work submitted on any theme or subject, and we can accept images, videos or audio.

The selected artists will be able to experiment as much as they like, without the worries that a really specific brief can bring with it. It’s an exciting concept, and hopefully it’ll help to generate lots of fantastic ideas!

To apply, you need to be a UK resident aged between 14-26 who identifies as being disabled. If you’re 14 or 15, you’ll need an adult to submit an application on your behalf. To apply for the programme, or to find out more, you can download our application pack or apply online here. You can can find an audio version of the information here. If you need any extra help please get in touch.

The deadline for applications is 5.00pm on Thursday 18 March. We’ll announce who our young artists are on Monday, the 29th of March.

I look forward to reading your applications!