Drawing on the thoughts he shared at the announcement of this year’s Awards for Artists recipients, our Head of Programme – Arts, Shoubhik Bandopadhyay, reflects on the value of the awards and its role in our wider grant making practice.
Awards for Artists is now in its fourth decade, having reached its 30th anniversary last year. While they have evolved significantly since they first began, the essence of the programme has remained incredibly consistent over those thirty years. We think this reflects a core belief Paul Hamlyn Foundation holds, which is that making art is one of the most worthwhile things a person can do.
Art creates ways of seeing the world and making new worlds that are essential to our existence. If we accept that premise, then programmes like Awards for Artists put us in very special company, reflecting an incredible cross-section of cultural work in the UK including artists, curators, programmers, those who lead organisations, and people like ourselves, who support this ecosystem of practice.
Working in a philanthropic foundation, we are thinking about how to create just futures, how to make a better world, and how we can use our resources to do so. It’s true that we all need money to live, but to live well we need freedom — freedom to create and express, freedom to rest, freedom to understand ourselves better, and to be in right relation with each other. And these awards are given, without any conditions attached, to honour that idea.
This means that we give these awards with no real idea of what the recipients will do with the money and with no expectation that they will tell us what they do with it once they’ve received it. Recipients may be at a moment in their career when they want to dedicate more resources to their practice, but they may also need a period of reflection, archiving or experimentation that is rarely afforded to most. Of course, we always hope that it helps to sustain their practice beyond the end of the three-year award, but it isn’t always the case.
In 2024, we marked the 30th anniversary of our Awards for Artists. To celebrate, we spoke with 12 artists who have received the Award throughout its history to understand its impact on their lives and practices.
What does it mean for us to give in this way? The reality is that when we liberate the artists from any ‘outcomes’, we do the same for ourselves, which is not usual practice within philanthropy. We’re not monitoring and evaluating, we’re not chasing anyone for a report or for some statistics on audience feedback or some such, we’re supporting artists to do what they believe is best for them, and it’s a great exercise for us in letting go a bit of the power we hold.
We’ve changed how we work and more and more of our arts grant making is going to support organisations who centre artistic leadership and the development of practice in all art forms. In recent times, we’ve supported festivals like Take Me Somewhere in Glasgow, venue-based organisations like Grand Union in Birmingham and Metroland Cultures in Brent, alongside some more emerging creative infrastructure like Radical Ecology in Devon and Skin Deep Magazine.
Orienting towards artists in this way has added a lot of depth and also a lot of joy to our work and it’s also been great to build a stronger link with the rest of our grant making.
“Making art is one of the most worthwhile things a person can do.”
Each of the nominated visual artists and composers have an incredible depth of practice, and they are connected to a network of peers, collaborators and supporters, extending out across the world, across art forms and history. We know how much they have invested into their work, and also how many of them represent communities larger than their own practice.
We are proud to be making this humble but meaningful contribution to the essential work of visual artists and composers at this time.
We are pleased to announce the names of this year’s recipients of Awards for Artists – the largest individual arts awards for visual artists and composers in the UK.
Each year, our Awards for Artists recognise exceptional visual artists and composers. In this blog, we explore one of its defining aspects – an art award with no strings attached.
