REFRAME: The Residency, produced by the Southbank Centre with Factory International in Manchester and Birmingham City University’s STEAMhouse and Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, and supported by Apple, is in place to reach and support Black and Black Mixed heritage creatives aged 18 – 30 who are looking to take their career in the creative sector to the next level. The Residency aims to enable young people with creative talent to overcome some of the barriers that can be faced when looking to get on in the creative industries.

The Residency programme will welcome you into a supportive environment with inspirational tutors and a peer network who will support you to develop your creative skills. At the end of The Residency, all participants from the three cities will have co-curated work which will be showcased at the Southbank Centre as part of a major festival in summer 2023.

A grant is available to participants who need support financially in order to access the programme. Travel expenses will be additionally covered during the 14-day Residency. Please see more details below.

Please read our FAQs in full before proceeding to our online registration form.

Core eligibility:

We are aiming to engage a cohort of 80 participants – 30 participants in London, 25 in Greater Manchester and 25 in Birmingham and the West Midlands.

Participants must be:

• Age 18–30 years old
• Currently creating work in photography, film or music, or a combination of these
• Black or Black Mixed heritage
• Living in London, Greater Manchester or Birmingham and the West Midlands.

Experience and qualifications:

You do not need to have any qualifications to take part in The Residency.

We would like to see evidence that you are currently producing work in photography, film or music, or a combination of these.

In designing the programme, we have aimed the content towards creatives who have no more than two years’ experience in creating content in their preferred medium. This is not a programme for complete beginners but for those who are still developing their creative voice and skills.

In the online registration form, we will ask you to provide two examples of your creative work that you are most proud of. Please provide us with URL links to your work. Please ensure that the work you send us via a URL link is clearly labelled with your name. If you are unsure how to use URL links, please email emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk

We are asking for examples of your work to understand more about you as an emerging creative, and so that we can bring together a cohort of creatives across music, photography and film-making who can collaborate and produce a body of work together.

REFRAME: The Residency will be offered in three cities – London, Manchester and Birmingham.

In London, the programme will take place at the Southbank Centre.

In Manchester, the programme will take place at a venue in the city centre in partnership with Factory International.

In Birmingham, the programme will take place at STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University.

Please email us confidentially on emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk to let us know if you have a disability or any access needs and we will be happy to make any adjustments we can to assist you in the registration and recruitment process.

REFRAME: The Residency is a fully funded programme. The online registration form will ask you a question that will help us to understand your financial situation. We are aware that young creatives may face challenges that prevent them from being able to take their creative practice further. We want to make sure that this programme supports people both with learning and financial support. We ask this question not to be intrusive, but to ensure places are given to those participants we most want to reach, and who experience the most barriers in their career progression.

A grant of £1,250 will be available to enable participation in the course. This will be paid in three instalments – the first in time for the funds to reach the participant ahead of the first day; the remaining two instalments spread across the programme.

Travel support will be also provided and will consist of:

• London participants: a daily Oyster travel card
• Birmingham participants: a daily Swift travel card
• Manchester participants: a daily System One travel card Food and refreshments will be provided at the course venues.

The main Residency programme will take place between April and May 2023.

The core course consists of 14 days of contact time. Dates and times will be published soon for each city. These sessions will be in-person, which we believe will provide the best outcome for participants. If you have any questions about your ability to attend the course, please email emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk.

All equipment and materials will be provided.

The programme will be delivered by leading Black creatives and practitioners, with guest appearances from across the industry.

Participants will have access to Apple technology during their time on the programme. Participants are not expected, or required, to have their own equipment.

At the end of The Residency, participants’ work will be curated into a special installation at the Southbank Centre in summer 2023.

We will also facilitate a mentoring programme for participants which will continue beyond the course of The Residency and will discuss a legacy and next-steps plan with each individual, to support and signpost participants into future opportunities.

Below is a timeline of the programme:

1 February 2023 Registration for REFRAME: The Residency opens 3 March 2023 Registration closes

17 March 2023 Open Recruitment Day (Southbank Centre, London) 24 March 2023 Open Recruitment Day (STEAMhouse, Birmingham)

27 March 2023 Open Recruitment Day (Factory International, Manchester) April 2023 Participants invited to take part in programme

April/May 2023 14 day REFRAME: The Residency will take place in London, Birmingham and Manchester

Summer 2023 Creatives’ work showcased at the Southbank Centre’s festival

Please go to the registration page https://careers.southbankcentre.co.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=458 where you will need to complete our Online Registration Form. This is where you will be able to share your work with us, along with providing key information about yourself.

We have provided the questions below, so you can reflect on these ahead of submitting your information. If you complete your form partway through, this is fine as you can save the form and come back to it again later.

As part of the form, we will also ask you to complete our Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form. The information provided will be kept confidential by the Southbank Centre and will be used for reporting purposes only for the Southbank Centre and its partners (Factory International, Midlands Arts Centre and STEAMhouse). Our full Privacy Statement can be found here. The information on the Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form will not be seen by those involved in the selection process, and no information will be published or used in any way which allows any individual to be identified.

The closing date for registration is 12 midnight on Friday 10 March 2023

• You may want to allow plenty of time to complete the process so that your registration form reflects you and your work well.
• Please answer all questions as clearly as you can, giving examples and specifics where it will help to build a picture for the selection team. Please read the FAQs fully, which will help if you get stuck or don’t understand a question. If you need any further support, please email emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk and one of the team will be happy to respond.
• If you don’t have access to the internet or a computer, please ring us on 07931 730004 or 07730 528049 to provide your answers over the phone and a member of our team will input them on to the system for you.

The form comprises four parts:

1. Personal information:

Your name, contact details, address, date and place of birth

2. Examples of your work:

We ask you to please provide two examples of your work – this will be used so that we have a good idea of the type of work you are creating and to allow us to select a range of creatives representing different disciplines in each location. Please provide us with URL links to your work. Please ensure that the work you send us via a URL link is clearly labelled with your name. If you are unsure how to use URL links, please email emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk

3. Three questions about your work and future aspirations, which are:

Please tell us why you have chosen these examples – what do they mean to you, why are you proud of them, what would you like to tell us about your work?

Reframe: The Residency will give you the chance to develop your creative skills and also to collaborate with other creatives on an exciting team project. Can you tell us about a team project you have been involved in? What part did you play?

Your example could be of a creative project, family project, sports team, work based, charity or volunteering, training course or education.

We will assess this question through evidence of:

Communication/listening to understand your team members

Problem solving/creative thinking

Adapting to achieve a shared goal

What are you hoping to achieve next in your career and professional development, and how can The Residency help you achieve your goals and ambitions?

These can be written out, or uploaded to the form as an audio recording. Please keep your answer to a maximum of 350 words in total under each section, whether written or as an audio recording.

Please note we cannot accept videos or audio files through the form. If you wish to answer questions via an audio recording, please provide a URL link for us to access the file.

4. A question about your annual income to help us understand who will most benefit from the funded places.

Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form

We will ask you to fill in an (optional) anonymised Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form. You are under no obligation to complete the survey if you do not want to. Participation is entirely voluntary and it is entirely your choice whether or not to complete all or any part of this survey. The information on the Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form will not be seen by those involved in the selection process, and no information will be published or used in any way which allows you to be identified. If you choose to fill in this form, your answers will provide us with valuable data and information to help us to work towards our goal of increased representation, engagement and reflection of the communities we serve.

In addition to the online registration form, we are also holding engagement events in London, Birmingham and Manchester for emerging creatives and wider community partners to find out more. These will be a mix of in-person and online.

Community engagement online events

Join us for friendly and supportive online engagement events where you can find out more about the programme and what’s involved. These sessions are available on the following dates:

• Wednesday 22 February
• Wednesday 1 March

All sessions run 4.30pm – 5.30pm.

If you would like to come to one of these online information events, please email emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk

The selection process

In March 2023, The Residency team will need to invite candidates who meet the minimum criteria to a Recruitment Open Day in their respective city (either London, Birmingham or Manchester).

If we are oversubscribed in any of the areas, we will use the work that we’ve asked people to submit as a deciding factor.

Open Recruitment Sessions will take place on:

- London: Friday 17 March 2023

- Birmingham: Friday 24 March 2023

- Manchester: Monday 27 March 2023

What are the Open Recruitment Sessions?

The recruitment session will last 2.5 hours. In the session, you will get to meet the people involved with REFRAME: The Residency – they will tell you more about the project, and you can ask them questions.

We will then invite you to take part in a team activity. During this activity, our facilitators will work with you, looking at how you work in a team, observing skills such as communication, problem-solving and ability to adapt. In the final part of the session, you’ll be matched with one of the REFRAME team for a chat about why you’d like to take part in the programme.

What happens if I am not invited to an Open Recruitment Session?

We will endeavour to notify all applicants of the outcome, but if you have not heard from us by the end of April 2023, please assume your registration has been unsuccessful this time.

When you register, we will ask you if you would be happy to be contacted by the Southbank Centre, STEAMhouse, Midlands Arts Centre and Factory International about future relevant opportunities. If you say yes, then we will keep your details on our database and let you know of any future events, programmes and schemes that may be of interest to you.

As we may have a large number of registrations, this may limit our ability to provide individualised feedback. However, for any queries, please contact The Residency team on emergingartists@southbankcentre.co.uk and we will endeavour to get back to you as soon as we can.