NWO grant for Critical Making project

On 1 March, a research consortium headed by Janneke Wesseling was awarded a 500.000 euros NWO grant for the project ‘Bridging art, design and technology through Critical Making’. The grant allows the applicants to realize a four year research trajectory which aims at furthering the discourse of Critical Making. Under the supervision of the senior researchers affiliated with the institutes involved, a PhD candidate and three junior researchers will work on four subprojects and will be stationed at one or several consortium partners. Artistic research is the methodological starting point. A call for proposals will be published in April 2017.

The grant is part of the research programme Smart Culture – Art and Culture, one of the research programmes within the topsector Creative Industries. The programme supports projects that make connections between concrete innovative art and cultural practices and more comprehensive academic and social issues.

The Critical Making NL consortium consists of Leiden University (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts), Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (Willem de Kooning Academy, Creating 010), Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, Waag Society in Amsterdam and West Den Haag. In 2016, the consortium has already been awarded a Creative Industries – KIEM grant for their project entitled ‘Critical Making as a model for art practice in the digital age’. In this context, several public events will be organized in the next few months. If you would like to stay informed about these developments and the programme, please send an email to info@phdarts.eu.