Do It Together 2026 – Call for Proposals

Year

2026

Deadline for Proposals

Wednesday 12 November 2025, 5pm

Application information

Before applying please read the Call for Proposals webpage and the DIT FAQs in full.

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What can we do together?

In collaboration with 19 national partners, LADA invites proposals for 10 peer-to-peer professional development projects designed by artists for artists to take place across the UK between March and September 2026.

What is DIT?

Do It Together (DIT) is a peer-to-peer professional development programme that enables artists to explore ideas, aesthetics and sociopolitical realities together.

Knowing that the development of Live Art practice is as much about methodologies and experiences as training in skills and techniques, DIT invites artists to delve into collective enquiries and share their process.

DIT reactivates LADA’s flagship programme, DIY, which ran unique professional development projects by artists for artists from 2002 to 2020. Still DIY, but Together, the crucial shift for 2026 is that each project will be supported by two national partners instead of one. By increasing the support at a time when both independents and organisations are struggling to resource artist development, DIT ignites a nation-wide support network for process-led experimental practice.

We know that DIY has always been about collective movements, but now, more than ever, we need to do it together.

Contents:

What we’re looking for
What you’ll get
How it works
DIT 2026 partners
Who can apply
How decisions will be made
DIT Timeline
Need support or have any questions?
Access

What we're looking for

We want to hear from artists and practitioners eager to design and lead a peer-to-peer project that benefits your own practice and others’, and explores questions, ideas, tools and methodologies in a shared, process-led space.

DIT is about learning with each other – not teaching others what we already know. Your proposal should set the frame of a collective enquiry for a group of artists to explore together. The most important thing is that you consider why it is important to do the activity with other artists, how you will do it together and what becomes possible through sharing the process.

DIT celebrates the unfixed, the unruly and the unconventional. We are looking for ideas that are rooted in our new realities, and those which create portals into the unknown. This is an opportunity to do things differently, and to support each other to challenge the status quo.

DIT projects can take any form, there really is no idea too weird or wild to be considered. DITs can be designed for inside or outside, live or online.

Some DIT partners have written specific briefs for artists to respond to, whilst others are open to anything.

8 people sit around a table smiling at each other, the photo is taken from above

From DIY 2019: Afrofuturism and Chill, led by Rebekah Ubuntu. Image by artist

From DIY14: Water Bodies, led by Zoe Czavda Redo, Tuuli Malla, Xavier Velastin. Image by Rosie Lonsdale

What you’ll get

A budget of £2,250 total to deliver your project. Please see the DIT FAQs for more information on how to plan your budget.
Producing and hosting support from a partnership duo to develop and lead the project in their location.
Access to space provided by partners for the preparation and/or delivery of the project, if needed.
A facilitated group planning session focused on embedding access and inclusion in your planning.

From DIY 2016: Playing The Victim, led by Katherine Araniello and Laura Dee Milnes. Image courtesy of the artists

How it works

Propose a project: This can be in line with one of the partner briefs or completely open.

Match with partners: The proposals will be reviewed by LADA and the DIT partner organisations. Based on the proposal, we will identify the best fit for partnerships, and the projects will be matched with partners as part of the selection process.

Develop the project: Your partners will support you to plan your project. Together, you will join a facilitated group planning session focused on access and inclusion.

Find artists to take part: Artists and practitioners will apply to participate in the selected projects through a national open call for each project, managed by LADA. The selection of participating artists/practitioners will be led by you in collaboration with your partners.

Do it together: The DIT projects will happen between March and September 2026.
Sharing: We will have a closing online event for all project leaders, participating artists/practitioners and partners in September 2026.

From DIY 12 FAF: Female Armed Forces, led by Tania El Khoury and Abigail Conway. Image courtesy of the artists

From DIY15: (Un) Doing Cruising Practice(s), led by Liz Rosenfeld. Image courtesy of the artist

DIT 2026 partners

1. Art Gene x Lancaster Arts

Location: Barrow-in-Furness
Brief: Coastal

Lancaster Arts and Art Gene are situated at either end of Morecambe Bay and are interested in exploring themes of ‘coastal’, liminality, and edgelands.

Both Barrow-in-Furness, where Art Gene is based, and Morecambe (part of Lancaster’s coastline) share a juxtaposition of industry and nature. Both have nature reserves adjacent to significant industries: Barrow with the construction of the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet and Morecambe with the Heysham nuclear power plant. Both also have areas of extreme economic deprivation. Perceptually and physically, these communities are a long way from city issues, but at the centre of the armaments and nuclear power industries and in close proximity to an exceptionally beautiful coastline and iconic landscapes such as the Lake District and the Forest of Bowland. Through the theme ‘coastal’ as a starting point, the partners are seeking proposals that connect to this specific local and geographical context.

2. Artsadmin x Future Ritual

Location: London
Brief: Artsadmin and Future Ritual are supporting one DIT project in London. They welcome proposals rooted in performance art, particularly site-responsive, durational and embodied practices. They’re interested in work engaging with London’s energy, contradictions and histories, or its unique ecologies and belief systems. Artists can live anywhere in the UK, but the project must be inspired by, respond to, or be in dialogue with London. It will be hosted at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios, with up to 10 days’ studio space in March/April 2026 for planning and delivery and potential for off-site engagement.

3. Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts x Marlborough Productions

Location: Brighton
Brief: Open to anything but in line with Marlborough Productions’ mission, the partners are looking for a project that is queer led and/or engaging with intersectional queer culture and community.

4. BUZZCUT x Take Me Somewhere

Location: Glasgow
Brief: A project fitting within a festival context

In April 2026, BUZZCUT Festival returns to Glasgow and will be hosting artists who make raw and challenging work in an encouraging atmosphere. As part of their DIT partnership, BUZZCUT and Take Me Somewhere are looking for proposals that feel well-positioned within a festival context like BUZZCUT. They’re interested in what it means to host the lead artist(s) and the participating artists/practitioners within the festival, and what possibilities emerge in this context that might not be possible elsewhere. How can BUZZCUT Festival be in dialogue with your proposal? The partners invite you to consider this in the broadest sense.

5. Colchester Arts Centre x Home Live Art

Location: Colchester or Hastings
Brief: Open to anything

6. Duckie x Metal

Location: Southend on Sea
Brief: Double Acts

Duckie’s Posh Club and Metal like creating connections: strangers collaborate, opposites attract, intergenerational and cross-cultural friendships emerge. They want to hear from artists interested in taking ‘double acts’ as a starting point. There is an option to use Duckie’s first Posh Clubs being set up in South End in Summer 2026 to explore your idea. Posh Club is a lunchtime showbiz club for working class older folks.

7. Fierce Festival x performance, possession + automation

Location: Birmingham
Brief: Conjuring Birmingham

Fierce and pp+a are looking for artists with both an explicit engagement with Birmingham and/or the West Midlands, and an interest in pp+a’s research on the resistant power of ‘spirit possession’, the contemporary rise of automation, and their entanglement with histories of colonial slavery. They encourage site-specific proposals and can provide access to a small meeting space in the Fierce office to support this.

8. GroundWork Gallery x Norfolk & Norwich Festival

Location: King’s Lynn
Brief: Children, Young People & Our Environment

Festival Connect & Create is Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s participation and engagement initiative, working to improve the cultural lives of children, young people, and their communities across Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. GroundWork Gallery is dedicated to art and the environment, connecting contemporary art with global environmental concerns in King’s Lynn. As part of their DIT partnership, they welcome proposals for a project that brings together socially engaged practice with children and young people, and themes of the climate and environment.

Please note: For this brief, the participants should still be peer artists, but artists who are interested in creating work for and with young people and the brief’s themes. The partners are not looking for you to create a brief to do with young people and all participating artists should be over the age of 18.

9. hÅb x Lowry

Location: Manchester
Brief: Open to anything

10. Scottish Sculpture Workshop x Take Me Somewhere

Location: Aberdeenshire
Brief: Material Agency

Scottish Sculpture Workshop and Take Me Somewhere want to hear from artists and practitioners who are interested in working together with landscape, objects and materials. The DIT project should happen in or near Scottish Sculpture Workshop.

From DIY 2019: To The Ritual Knowledge Of Remembering // HIT THE GROUND. led by Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson. Image by Sara Lima

5 people sit apart from each on a coastal rock formation each with a notepad in their laps

From DIY 2019: The confusing space between, led by Adriana Disman. Image courtesy of the artist

DIY 2013 – Gustavo Ciríaco ‘Where the horizon moves’. Image courtesy of the artist

DIY 2019 – Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, FK Alexander & Andre Neely ‘THE CULT’. Image courtesy of the artists

DIY 2015 – Adam James ‘Maps of Power’. Image credit Adam James, Wasteland Rituals

two women in lingerie recline leisurely in a blow up pini flamingo on a pavement

From DIY 2019: GILD Island, led by Vortessa. Image courtesy of the artist

a close up image of a person in a large orange wig abd green glittery make up, with their arm around someone who is wearing a green t-shirt

From DIY 2019: Unsightly Drag, led by Quiplash. Image courtesy of the artist

From DIY 2014: Atmospheric pressure: Performance vs Weather, led by Katie Etheridge and Simon Persighetti. Image courtesy of the artists

From DIY14: SEX TLK MTG (Sunrise to Sunset), led by Bedfellows. Image courtesy of the artist

8 trans-masc artist pose in a clay/pottery studio in overalls, one person is wearing a red and white fluffy cowboy hat

From DIY 2019: SWEAT: the sky leaks, I leak, led by Edythe Woolley. Image courtesy of the artist

Who can apply

UK-based artists/practitioners with 5+ years of professional experience.
Artists working in any discipline that currently engage, or would like to engage, with Live Art and interdisciplinary performance practices.
Practitioners including independent curators, producers, writers and technical collaborators working closely with these practices.

Read more about how LADA defines Live Art here.

DIY 2020: Strengthening the Choir *with thanks to Rebecca Solnit, led by Susanne Bosch, Tellervo Kalleinen and Chrissie Tiller. Image credit Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen

How decisions will be made

LADA and DIT partners will review proposals based on the following criteria:

The inventiveness, originality and curiosity of the proposal.
The urgency and sociopolitical relevance of the themes and questions being explored.
Why this project needs to happen with others, and how the artist and participating artists/practitioners will benefit in tandem.
How your proposal fits with the brief, values and/or priorities of the partner organisations.
To ensure equality of opportunity, decisions will take into account applicants’ backgrounds, lived experiences and geographical diversity.

DIY 2017: Her Eyes Under the Bridge, led by Tara Irani. Image credit the artist

DIT Timeline

12 November 2025 – Submission Deadline
December 2025 – Selection panel; we aim to notify all applicants by Friday 12 December
January 2026 – Open Call for participating artists/practitioners for selected DIT projects
March-September 2026 – DIT project take place
September 2026 – Closing Event (Online)

DIY9 – Zierle and Carter. Image courtesy of the artists

Need support or have questions?

Before applying please make sure you read our DIT FAQs thoroughly.

We’ll be running two free online information sessions on Friday 17 and Tuesday 21 October where you can hear more about DIT, ask questions and get tips on applying.

Access

We accept written, video, and audio applications. If you want to submit a video or an audio application, please answer the questions listed in the Application Form within a recording of 5 minutes in total. Send the file to [email protected].

We cannot provide or pay for access support to help with writing or preparing the application.

Should you need support accessing or uploading the application or have a question about the application form, please email us or call us on 020 8985 2124 and we will be happy to offer further support.

Other projects in Do It Together 2026 - Call for Proposals

Peer-to-peer professional development projects designed by artists for artists.

Ongoing

DIT FAQs

DIY

A list of frequently asked questions covering all aspects of the DIT application process