The Connections Through Culture grants programme is designed to nurture fresh cultural partnerships between East Asia and the UK. These grants are instrumental in supporting new ideas and collaborations from artists and cultural organisations at any stage of development.

The grants supported in this round of Connections Through Culture programme have focused on two distinct areas: diversity and inclusion and, addressing climate change. The collaborative efforts across borders and artistic disciplines will lead to new thoughts and ideas created to address global challenges.

The grants support new connections, exchanges and collaborations. These grants help build long-term relationships and collaborations between artists, cultural professionals, creative practitioners and art and cultural organisations, hubs, networks, and collectives.

Connections Through Culture grantees 2023

Biosignals

UK: Dr. Amy Holt 

Philippines: UPOU-FICS, Dr. Diego S. Maranan 

"Biosignals" is a collaborative project between the Philippines, the UK, and New Zealand (AwhiWorld), uniting diverse perspectives to create a planet-wide new media artwork. The project aims to collect, process, and transmit signals from local plant life at each site, connecting isolated entities and addressing challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss.

Comics Create a Better World

UK: Lakes Arts Festivals

Philippines: Komiket 

Building on a 2021 collaboration, the project focuses on exchanging knowledge between UK and Filipino creators to engage children and young people in the process of creating their own original work on climate change. Key elements include selecting creators from underrepresented communities in the UK and the Philippines, providing virtual training sessions, and mentoring the creators for workshops with young people.

God Save The Queers, Bless The Badings

UK: INFERNO LONDON 

Philippines: Elephant 

This collaboration will culminate in a month-long Queer Festival in June 2024, hosted by ELEPHANT and INFERNO LONDON, that aims to platform the spectrum of religious experiences through a queer perspective by interpolating activism in alternative queer art and nightlife spaces.

Inspiring Creative Action to Help Artisan Communities Surmount Climate Change Induced Disaster

UK: League of Artisans CIC 

Philippines: Twinkle Ferraren 

This project aims to develop a practical toolkit for textile artisans in disaster-prone areas, drawing on experiences in Kerala, India, Sri Lanka, and Peru. The toolkit focuses on pre-disaster planning and post-disaster recovery, aiming to support mainly women-led creative enterprises.

Listen: Can you hear the fish cry? An embodied audio project with writers in the UK and the Philippines platforming voices impacted by Climate Crisis

UK: Michelle Roche 

Philippines: Binhi Creatives 

This innovative project fosters a cross-cultural dialogue between artists in Bacolod and the UK, focusing on climate crisis narratives through experiential audio drama. Led by Michelle Roche, co-founder of Play Inside, the project aims to amplify underrepresented voices affected by climate change, particularly women.

Performing Diwata: ecotransfeminism in precolonial Philippine mythology

UK: Giulia Casalini 

Philippines: Ram Botero 

This collaborative Research and Development project, inspired by the ‘Diwata’ image series, tackles the theme of precolonial Philippine mythology whilst intersecting its legacy in contemporary society. It will produce a performance for camera, a written piece, and an audio file, and includes performance training, research trips to Davao and Nabunturan, interviews with indigenous communities, and a two-day performance filming.

Song and Sovereignty: Food Justice and the Preservation of Local Farming Culture

UK: Tilted Axis Press

Philippines: Gantala Press, Inc

The project seeks to preserve the literary culture of women in the Philippines amidst changing farming practices due to climate change and political instability. Through partnerships with organisations, fieldwork, and community events, the project will record folk songs, poetry, and recipes. Literary translation workshops and collaborations with Filipino migrants in the UK will contribute to diverse publications.

The Possibility of Forests: Twin Installations in a Celtic Rainforest and a Tropical Cloud Forest

UK: Curtis Cresswell 

Philippines: Mica Cabildo 

Connecting Celtic rainforests in Britain with tropical cloud forests in the Philippines, the project explores climate-sensitive biomes through interactive media, art, and ecology practices. 

Where The Flowers Bloom: Transforming the Colonial study and artistry of Philippine-U.K. Botanicals through weaving identity in the retelling of Biodiversity amidst the Ecological Crisis

UK: Beatriz Gemperle

Philippines: TAYO House of Culture & Creativity 

A collaborative project that aims to deconstruct and reimagine the colonial study of Philippine botanicals by weaving Filipino Identity such as myths, patterns, stories, relationships, and rituals into a collaborative process of botanical preservation. The project will weave local and indigenous understanding in immersive art pieces exhibited alongside archival botanicals, crafting new educational material.

Wild Patch

UK: Ligaya Salazar 

Philippines: Derek Tumala 

The collaborative multi-site project exploring the symbolism of weeds, challenging societal norms and othering. Through workshops, film screenings, and reading groups in the Philippines and the UK, the project questions the perception of weeds as 'other,' drawing parallels with queerness and diasporic communities.