Announcing Diverse Actions Leadership Bursaries recipients 2018/19

Live Art UK is delighted to announce that Victoria Sin and Zinzi Minott have been awarded the 2018/19 Diverse Actions Leadership Bursaries.

The bursary scheme is run by the LADA as part of Live Art UK’s Diverse Actions programme. The bursaries are intended to support a new generation of ‘skilled-up’ leaders from culturally diverse backgrounds, and new models of leadership which will have an impact on the Live Art sector and across the arts.

Following an open call for proposals in January 2018, LADA received 36 proposals for the leadership bursaries. The bursaries were assessed by a selection panel made up of representatives from the LADA; Daniel Kok of Cambridge Junction (the lead organisation for Diverse Actions); the Diverse Actions Project Managers Afreena Islam and Salome Wagaine; and current bursary recipients Season Butler and Joon Lynn Goh.

Between April 2018 and March 2019, and supported by awards of £10,000 each, Victoria and Zinzi will undertake self-determined, year-long programmes of artistic, professional and skills development with the aim of stimulating new ways of working, developing new contexts and discourses, and ultimately enhancing artistic practice and artistic leadership. Victoria will undertake a programme which considers the potential of speculative fiction narratives and queer and of colour futurity in the framework of Live Art, while Zinzi will research an alternative funding strategy for Black artists that is Black-led, artist-led, reliable and sustainable.

Victoria Sin (b. 1991, Toronto CA) is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body.  Their long-term project Dream Babes explores science and speculative fiction as a productive strategy of queer resistance, imaging futurity that does not depend on existing historical and social infrastructure. 

Victoria says: “The DALB is allowing me the space, time and opportunity to develop in ways that feel urgent to my practice and future as an artist, I look forward to what this year brings.”

Zinzi Minott’s solo and collaborative pursuits focus on the relationships between dance and politics. She is interested in how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class. Her practice is driven through Dance, and her outcomes range from dances, performance, Live Art, Sound, Film, and Objects. Zinzi is interested in the space between Dance and Art and is creating a habitat between the two worlds.

Zinzi says: “Other than my creative output, searching for a sustainable structure that Black Artist can use to live, make work and thrive is the only legacy I want to leave. The DALB is allowing me to do the necessary research to get closer to that. It's exciting and necessary!”

More information on Live Art UK’s Diverse Actions programme.

See call for proposals 2018/19

The call for proposals for the 2019/20 Diverse Actions Leadership Bursaries will be announced in January 2019.