Enter now! Student Writing Competition: New Voices Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 reflecting on international exchange programme Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022.Winners will receive a £60 cash prize, and have their writing published on the Peer to Peer: HK/UK 2022 website. Deadline is 12 noon, 28th November 2022. The submission form is here.
WHO are we looking for?
Any undergraduate or postgraduate who is excited to write about art and ideas! Writing could be something that they are already passionate about, or their first time writing a short text like this. The aim of the New Voices Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 writing competition is to platform new critical voices around contemporary arts and related, or associated, ideas.
We will select up to SIX current students who submit texts that best fit the brief. Each winner will receive a £60 cash prize, have their writing published on the Peer to Peer:HK/UK 2022 website, and shared across the world via all 18 of our art organisations’ social media sites.
WHAT are we looking for?
We are looking for a 500 word piece of either:
- Critical writing in the form of a review
- Or creative writing in any shape or form.
Entrants can choose ANY art project to write about from the Peer to Peer:UK/HK 2022 online visual arts festival. They can also choose to respond to the festival as a whole. The Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 projects have been made in exchange between artists in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, and span film photography, video, digital collage, performance, poetry, drawing, painting and more. Each artist’s project has been published in full and is easy to view online via the festival website. This is an exciting, diverse and global programme of contemporary art in many forms… and we’d like to select a range of writing that truly reflects that!
Advice:
Submitting a review. A review is typically your informed opinion, in your own words. This review should be a pleasure to read by anyone who visits the Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 website, and can reflect on the festival as a whole, or on individual artists’ projects. Do bear in mind the short word count: what can be said in that space that sticks in the reader’s mind? We are looking for a critically balanced, informative and entertaining 500 words.
Submitting creative writing. This submission will use a project from Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 as a starting point to experiment with related themes. This could take the form of a poem, short fictional story, or any short form experimental structure that truly reflects the artwork. Again, it must stick to 500 words or under.
Whichever you choose to submit, please write with our core audience in mind: people from the visual arts sector or with a keen interest in visual arts, nationally and internationally. We would prefer to avoid overly academic language, or on the opposite end of the scale, ‘dumbing down’.
Themes of interest:
For New Voices Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022, we are particularly interested in writing that considers the festival content in relation to one or more of the following themes:
- Collaboration as a route to innovative practice.
- Revealing the creative process.
- The question of international working in an era which recognises the climate crisis.
The Judges:
Critical Writing (review)
Mariama Attah. Mariama is a photography curator, writer and lecturer with a particular interest in overlooked histories, and understanding how photography and visual culture can be used to amplify under-represented voices. Mariama is Head of Exhibitions at Open Eye Gallery. She was previously Assistant Editor of Foam Magazine. Prior to this, she was Curator of Photoworks, where she was responsible for developing and curating Brighton Photo Biennial and was Commissioning and Managing Editor of Photoworks Annual.
Lindsay Taylor. Lindsay has led the strategic development of the University of Salford Art Collection since 2013, brokering key partnerships with artists and arts organisations across the UK and internationally. She is passionate about supporting artists, pioneering a collecting policy based on co-commissioning new work in 3 strands: Chinese Contemporary Art, About the Digital and From the North. She also established a Graduate Scholarship Programme in 2014 with Castlefield Gallery and studio partners in Salford. She has co-commissioned new work by numerous artists from the UK and internationally and continues to contribute to national debate about developing contemporary collections. Lindsay co-organised Peer to Peer:UK/HK 2022 with Sarah Fisher from Open Eye Gallery. Lindsay is Chair of Redeye the Photography Network, a trustee of the Peter Scott Gallery Trust at Lancaster University and on the advisory board for the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool. Previously she held positions at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, Tate Liverpool, and The Walker.
Creative Writing
Laura Robertson. Laura is a professional art critic with a decade’s worth of experience freelancing for the world’s top art magazines, including, frieze, Art Monthly and the national culture show, BBC Radio 4 Front Row. She employs a blend of journalism, fiction and storytelling in her work as a form of experimental criticism, and is currently writing a creative non-fiction book about night terrors, horror and contemporary art. She is a graduate of MA Writing, Royal College of Art. She co-founded The Double Negative indie arts magazine in 2011, which continues to champion cultural criticism from underrepresented writers about under-the-radar creative practice.
Maria Gulina. Maria is Digital Marketing, Communications and Content Producer at Open Eye Gallery. She previously worked as a journalist and an editor in independent media and environmental NGOs. She is a graduate of MA Media and Cultural Studies, Lancaster University, and has fiction and non-fiction publications. She is interested in intersections of art, nature and participatory practices.
Submission details:
To enter the New Voices Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 writing competition please:
- complete the form in English and save as a PDF
- then email to maria@openeye.org.uk no later than 12 noon on Monday 28th November 2022.
Winners will be informed no later than week commencing Monday 5th December 2022. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to provide feedback to the entries which are not selected.