Mentoring
Are you a UK based experimental musician or artist working with sound? Do you need help writing about your work? Do you have a great idea that needs institutional support from funders, residencies or elsewhere? Do you struggle with articulating your work or filling out application forms? Do you have trouble approaching the organisations and institutions you'd like to work with?
In 2024-2025 we are looking to work one-on-one with eight artists, groups, ensembles or collectives, to give some practical insights and informal teaching of the writing skills required to approach application forms. We aim to help people access support for their work or develop a particular project, learning the skills and language needed for future projects.
The scheme is centred around musicians and artists working with sound, who have an existing track record of making, releasing, or showing work, but who would benefit from help and guidance in communicating their work with funders and institutions in future.
“Without doubt the most effective scheme of this nature I have ever engaged with. It’s not and understatement when I say the Interior Motive team has effectively changed the trajectory of my career / life via all the support they provided. A truly vital a scheme for artists in my opinion!” (feedback from 2021 participant)
During the mentorship, we will work together on developing your writing skills, identifying a specific goal: for example a funding application for a specific project, or an artist statement to be used for multiple projects in future. The aim will be to develop your understanding of the language and tone required from these sorts of texts, to demystify the ways artists and musicians are expected to communicate and work with larger organisations, institutions and audiences.
As a guideline we’ll aim to work online with you over 4 sessions, spread over 2 months. We offer flexible scheduling arrangements, allowing you to fit the programme around other commitments such as work or caring. Each mentee receives £350 (in total) to cover our time together.
Each mentorship also offers additional bespoke individual and/or group sessions with industry specialists from our UK-wide partner network: these include organisations like Capsule/Supersonic Festival (Birmingham) Full of Noises (Barrow-in-Furness) HCMF (Huddersfield), Qu Junktions (Bristol).
We are offering 8 mentorships, with two application rounds.
We particularly welcome applications from those with protected characteristics who are currently under-represented in their sphere of live music, performance, or arts. If you want to discuss your access needs or have further queries contact us at weareinteriormotive@gmail.com with your questions.
Please read the FAQs for more info.
How to apply
Round 1 applications open on 8th July 2024.
The Round 1 application deadline is 6th September 2024.
We will announce the Round 2 application dates in autumn 2024.
To apply, submit your application by midnight on the deadline day. The application form asks three informal questions, you may also answer in writing, or as an audio or video file. Please do not worry about tone, spelling and grammar – we want to know about your work/practice/music/art in your own words, why the mentorship would be useful to you, and to see some evidence or links to your work.
- Dates: Round 1 September-November 2024, Round 2 January-March 2025
- Payments: you receive £350 to cover 4 half-day sessions with us
- Application portal link (incoming)
- Please read our FAQs