The Connections Through Culture grants programme nurtures fresh cultural partnerships between the Asia Pacific region and the UK. These grants support new ideas and collaborations from artists and cultural organisations at any stage of development.

The grants supported in this round of the Connections Through Culture programme focus on diversity and inclusion and climate change. Collaborations across borders and artistic disciplines will lead to new ideas to address these global challenges.

The grants support new connections, exchanges, and collaborations to build long-term relationships between artists, cultural professionals, creative practitioners, arts and cultural organisations, and collectives. 

2024 Grant Recipients: Indonesia

Bali-Glasgow Filmmaker and Programme Exchange

UK: Glasgow Short Film Festival

Indonesia: Yayasan Kino Media (Minikino)

Through short films and filmmaker residencies, workshops, and festivals, Minikino and GSFF hope to open a creative dialogue in Scotland and Indonesia around environmental sustainability, social change, and empowerment. This collaboration will seek to find common ground on each organisation’s community challenges in driving social change, facilitating greater inclusion, and developing plans for longer-term partnerships.

Bunrang

UK: Void Art Centre

Indonesia: Jatiwangi Art Factory

Bunrang is an online and in-person collaboration seeking to centre the contributions of artistic research and organisational sharing between Northern Ireland and Indonesia. The goal is to reorganise cultural institutions towards more environmentally and socially sustainable practices.

 

Circle of Power: DIY Music and Energy research exchange, between UK and Indonesia

UK: Curious Ear

Indonesia: Ethnictro

Inspired by a shared interest in experimental guitar and ways to think ecologically about future creative works, this project hopes to explore ways to harness motion and energy for performance. The project will begin in Europe, exploring different energy sources, with a final performance in the UK.

Encaustic Wax and Batik: Reflecting Environmental Fragility through Cross-Cultural Art

UK: Lyn Kirkland

Indonesia: Ria Ekasari

This collaborative project bridges traditional encaustic painting and Indonesian batik, uniting two ancient wax-based art forms to address shared environmental challenges. The residency fosters cultural exchange, blending batik’s resist dyeing with encaustic’s layered painting to highlight ecological issues. Following the programme, a public education module on encaustic art will be developed in Indonesia, encouraging community-building. 

 

Extending the Rest of our Lives

UK: Jo Fong, George Orange

Indonesia: Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja (PSBK)

This project harnesses the wisdom and experience of older artists through engaging collaborative workshops and performances. Through movement, dance, play, conversation, and listening, this project cultivates intergenerational "creative friendships" and redefines mentorship as an exchange of mutual support.

Extraction Echoes: Art, Empathy and Non-Human Narratives

UK: Videocity

Indonesia: Forum Sudutpandang

This project brings together Indonesian and UK-based video artists in a travelling video art exhibition. It will explore the histories of extraction and mining, and their environmental impact. The project aims to highlight the interconnection between humans and their environment by exploring human and non-human narratives.

Kinship through rice: intercultural re/worlding through shared narratives of cultural and biological diversity and regenerative design

UK: Design Ecologies Ltd

Indonesia: Navetta Studio

Inspired by Donna Haraway's 'making kin' concept, 'Kinship through rice' integrates cultural narratives and reimagines relationships between humans, the environment, and non-human entities through design. Navetta Studio and Design Ecologies Ltd will explore our connection to the land through eating, dwelling, and storytelling with rice. The project promotes environmental stewardship, fosters cultural empowerment and connects people worldwide.

Marginalised Women's Voices on Climate Emergency in Sulawesi and Wales

UK: Alexandra Büchler - Literature Across Frontiers (LAF)

Indonesia: Makassar International Writers Festival

'Marginalised Women's Voices on Climate Emergency in Sulawesi and Wales' will address the global impact of climate emergency by connecting two communities across continents and cultures. It emphasises the need to tackle climate change at an international level, while using grassroots initiatives.

PANJAGO: Body-Sound-Improvisation

UK: Scott Wilson, BEAST

Indonesia: Rumah Gagas

Panjago means 'guardian'. We aim to protect the vibrancy of our traditions while renewing them in international artistic collaborations. This project will combine the traditional movement art of Silek with 360-degree immersive electronic music and improvisation. ‘Live coding' techniques and interactive electronic music systems will create 'surround sound' over the 32-channel BEASTdome system.

Patterned Vegetation: On the Biodegradable Materiality of Experimental Films

UK: Karel Doing

Indonesia: Lab Laba-Laba

“Patterned Vegetation” is a collaboration by Lab Laba-Laba and Karel Doing that explores the challenges of analogue filmmaking and seeks an alternative approach to capture and narrate ecological shifts in the West Java rainforest. This project will focus on a technique called Phytography. Refined by Karel Doing, phytography uses the internal chemistry of plants to make detailed images on photographic emulsion.