BASS 2009 Commissions

Background

BASS Festival (British Arts and Street Sounds) is the UK’s only month long celebration of Black Music and Art.   Every June, the UK comes alive with a phenomenal line up of events, new commissions, gigs, exhibitions, master classes, showcases, club nights, theatre, conferences and film.

Produced by Punch Records in partnership with 2Funky Arts, Baby J Studios, and Hella Music the key aims of the festival are to:

- Forge communicative and appropriate artistic partnerships between venues, artists and promoters

- Challenge programming and audience development practices in an attempt to expand, diversify and improve the image and accessibility of urban arts.

- Build concrete foundations to establish the festival as a long-term feature of the region’s and the UK’s annual cultural programme.

Now in its 4th year BASS has established itself as a driving force on the UK's festival scene and has huge outreach to a fantastically diverse audience base.

Events are held mainly in the Midlands region (Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester and Derby) with satellite events in cities such as London, Manchester and Bristol. They are delivered in a range of contrasting venues from universities, museums, galleries, bars to public spaces. This approach ensures that a huge cross section of the region's communities have unrivalled exposure and easy access to the festival.

Download last year's brochure above

Themes

Every year the BASS festival follows a theme to help develop a united, innovative, challenging and progressive method to showcase urban arts.

Previous themes have included:

2006 Urban Art in New Venues
2007 Internationalism
2008 The Five Elements Hip Hop

The theme for 2009 is:

‘Inspired by Africa and Africans’

The aim of this year’s theme is celebrate and explore Africa’s influence on the arts scene. Working with mainstream and grassroots organisations, we will also be encouraging a broad range of audiences to participate in and experience the global impact of African cultural expression.

BASS 09 isn’t just about djembe drumming!  We will be celebrating the wealth of African talent present in the UK through international artistic exchange, major presentations of contemporary work, new installations, artist lounges, concerts and masterclasses.

BASS Effect Commissions

A key part of the BASS programme has always been its unique commissions. Here artists, organisations and promoters are individually commissioned to produce an event or new piece of work specifically for the festival.

For BASS 2009 Punch are opening up the commissioning scheme and of awards £500 - £3000 to support new work developed for the festival.  Please note that we expect the average award to be around £1000.  The top award of £3000 will only be awarded to exceptional projects.

What You Could Apply For

BASS welcomes applications from any art form (music, film, fashion, visual art, theatre, dance, etc) but will favours those that have a bias towards urban or black forms of expression or content.

We are looking for fresh, original, exciting, challenging and innovative work that hits one or more of the festival drivers and in some way ties in with the theme of this year’s festival. It might be a completely new project or an exciting extension of your current practice. We want you to use the commissions as an opportunity to explore those ideas you wouldn’t normally see as viable. 

In past years commissions have included:

• Grime theatre show
• Photographic exhibition of Hip Hop legends
• Film screening and Q&A with graffiti legends Henry Chalfant and Goldie
• Live Jazz and Hip Hop night with Jazzanova and Eska Mtungwazi
• Book launch on the history of Reggae Dj’s and sound systems with Dr Lez Henry
• Hip Hop and Poetry fusion night with Ursular Rucker and Ty
• Sole Elements – exhibition featuring trainer and street inspired art

How to Get Involved

We would like you to submit a simple outline proposal of up to 400 words describing what you would like to do. If we like your idea we will hold further discussion around capacity and management.  Below you will find a simple outline proposal form and outline budget to complete.

Please note, because we anticipate a high volume interest, we will only contact people that are successful.

Budget

Awards will range from £500 - £3000 and we expect the average award to be around £1000.   Please complete the basic budget outline to give us an idea of how you will mange your finances. These commissions are intended as artistic ventures rather than commercial money making incentives.

A sample budget form is included in the form.  Please complete is as part of your proposal.

Support

In additional to the awards, BASS will offer each project considerable support with national marketing and PR. Each commission will receive a full page in the BASS festival brochure (40k national print run) and inclusion in the official documentary and potentially our external ad campaign which includes radio, print and TV. We will also support the management where required and will be on hand to help and offer our expertise at any point.

Timetable

Deadline:   Friday 16th January, 2009
Decision:   Friday 30 January, 2009

Please email your submission to cynthia@punch-records.co.uk .

Late applications will not be accepted.

Call 0121 224 7444 for more information.