Art Meets receives Prince Claus Mobility grant
Art Meets Develops New App For the Art Community -
Focused on Africa and its Tech Needs
Cape Town, South Africa (15 February 2021) - Art Meets, with the support of the Prince Claus Mobility Fund and The British Council, are mapping the visual arts landscape across Africa. Art Meets is inviting artists, visual art professionals and organisations in the form of galleries, fairs, museums, auction houses to populate the map and join the conversation. Participants will be requested to establish their organisation/studio on the Art Meets App, connecting these nodes on a digital, interactive and publicly accessible art map. Through the use of the Art Meets app, this project will lay the foundation for larger digital infrastructure in arts and culture.
As a team of curators and artists, Art Meets are aware of the challenges in charting the digital space - connectivity, data access and supportive resources to navigate both online and offline visibility. Responsive to these aspects, they are creating (and curating) an effective platform, set to become a game changer in the visual arts domain.
The Art Meets app is an inclusive digital platform to promote and connect artists, art spaces and art events to a broad and diverse market. It accommodates cities with varied levels of arts infrastructure, overriding systems of economic exclusion to build local and international audiences. The Art Meets app can be used to find artists and art-based skills, and to navigate the landscape of galleries and art focused institutions.
Art Meets is passionate about facilitating open networks for collaboration and relationship building, with artists. Our mission is to create a supported, sustainable art industry, providing new models of engagement, content creation and dissemination. The platform seeks to facilitate social exchange and cultural fluidity, using art as a unifying language.
In 2020, Art Meets developed the experimental ‘24 hour pageant’ which saw the team endure a 24 hour livestream conversation with members of the visual arts community. Through a nomination process, the conversation spread from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania and crossed to South America, Germany and Australia.
Having received support from local institutions like VANSA and Greatmore Studios, Art Meets are now the recipients of the 2020 Prince Claus Mobility Fund in partnership with The British Council.
Art Meets will host monthly sessions, each consisting of 12 curated hour-long discussions with a diverse group of people from the arts community. Participants will be invited to add their spaces to the Art Meets app whilst sharing their experiences of navigating the art industry in their respective geographies. This is a chance for us to engage with ideas around arts infrastructure and find ways to support our industry through collaborative relationships across the continent.
Dates running on; 27 February 2021, 27 March 2021, 24 April 2021, 29 May 2021.
Times: each session runs from 10am - 10pm (SAST/CAT)
Interested participants can join the conversation by emailing info@artmeetsapp.com