Encouraging 100 emerging artists by nurturing their personal and artistic development, amplifying the talent of a new generation of global changemakers.
SEED Award
The Seed Award is partially made possible by British Council and Ing Yoe Tan Fund.
Our Seed Awardees are socially engaged artists and cultural practitioners who harness the transformative power of culture to create lasting positive change in their local communities.
We welcome applications from individuals who are within the initial 1 to 5 years of their professional career, whose practice addresses pressing social and political issues that are important within their local context, and who have received little to no institutional recognition and support for their artistic practices.
Eligible applicants must be from, live, and work in our eligible countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe.
Yes. You can create an account/log-in into our Prince Claus Awards Platform and see the application form and its steps before filling it out and submitting your application. Once you begin filling out the form, you can save it at any point and return to complete it later if this is before the deadline.
No. The Seed Award is awarded on a one-time only basis; successful award recipients are not eligible to apply again to the Prince Claus Awards. You are, however, encouraged to apply for the Prince Claus Fund Fellows Award.
Yes, you are welcome to apply again this year if your application has not been successful the previous time.
A pitch is a presentation where you introduce yourself, your work and most importantly, you answer to the question: What drives you as an artist/author/cultural practitioner?. We ask you to present your pitch in the format of a video or audio media of maximum 3 minutes long. We encourage you to be creative – this is our chance to get to know you a bit better, especially beyond the format of the application form.
You will receive an email confirmation within 10 minutes after submitting your application. If you have not received a confirmation, please make sure that the application is completed and that it was submitted. Additionally, you can check the status of your application on the Prince Claus Awards Platform under ‘My Submissions’. A completed application should read ‘submitted’ rather than ‘in progress’.
Supporting materials refer to any information about you and/or your work that have not been shared within the application form but are still important to be considered during the assessment phase. These could include samples of your previous or current work (images, videos, texts, etc.), a portfolio, reviews, interviews, extra references, or any links to social media that you would like to share.
No. To be eligible, an individual must come from and be living and working in one of our eligible countries at the time of the submission of your application.
We understand that there is a dire need for support in many places in the world. The Seed Awards are financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the framework of contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals, for which the focus is on OECD’s DAC listed countries. The OECD’s DAC stands for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Development Assistance Committee. Due to the provenance of our funding, Prince Claus is limited to grant Seed Awards only in OECD’s DAC listed countries.
No. To be eligible, an individual must come from and be living and working in one of our eligible countries at the time of the submission of your application.
We understand that there is a dire need for support in many places in the world. The Seed Awards are financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the framework of contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals, for which the focus is on OECD’s DAC listed countries. The OECD’s DAC stands for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Development Assistance Committee. Due to the provenance of our funding, Prince Claus is limited to grant Seed Awards only in OECD’s DAC listed countries.
You can submit your application online until January 21, 2025 at 17:00 Amsterdam time. After this time, our online system will automatically close and you will no longer be able to submit your application. We encourage you to apply well before the deadline as our online system can be busy on the date of the deadline and closes automatically at 17:00, after which we cannot accept any applications.
You will receive an email with the final decision regarding your application by mid-July 2025.
Due to the number of applications received we are not able to provide personalised feedback to all applicants. The Prince Claus Fund will provide all non-successful applicants with a general report on the common mistakes we received overall in the applications, and will share the major points for improving applications in the future.
We hold a very broad disciplinary understanding of arts and culture and encourage you to apply with a practice is embedded in this field. If you would like to see the disciplines that we have supported in the past, you can look into the repertoire of creatives that we have supported in the past here. We are always open to applications from experimental, innovative and inter-disciplinary art practices.
We do not support practices that are embedded in the academic or development field, such as academic scholarships or academic research.
A reference letter is a letter which is written by a person, or on behalf of an organisation, that knows your work, and/or has worked with you in the past and can recommend your work. The letter should explain how the referee knows your work and why they recommend you for the SEED or FELLOWS Award. The reference letter should be signed and contain the contact details of the person referring you. It does not have to be longer than a page.
You can always reach out to Emma van Schie, our Programmes Coordinator!
