Researching the Rural - Women in Agriculture

Berwick Visual Arts and Newcastle University’s Centre for Rural Economy (CRE), a research centre at Newcastle University, which work towards the achievement of sustainable development in rural areas, have an established partnership of delivering artist residencies which explores how artists and academics can collaborate to inform and develop new approaches to rural research and development.

In 2019 they also welcome a new partner to the residency – Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice, a world class hub for creative arts research, learning and teaching with significant impact regionally, nationally and internationally. For this new opportunity they wish to appoint an artist working in any medium to actively collaborate with researchers at CRE and relevant communities in Berwick and Northumberland to research, document and respond to the role of women within agriculture and the challenges and barriers that they face, within this sector.
Agriculture is one of the last remaining industries that is closed to women. There are no legal barriers preventing women entering the occupation, but there are significant cultural barriers. Women rarely inherit land if they have brothers. There are almost no women in positions of leadership in farming organisations. Despite the significant advances in gender equality in the Global North, women continue to face discrimination in the agricultural industry.
The residency is open to artists based in the UK and EU or artists who already have permission to work in UK. They are looking for an artist that has an established, engaging and accessible visual arts practice, that has the ability to engage with a wide range of partners including community members, researchers and academics and can collaborate with these partners to inform artistic outcomes. Applicants may want to use the residency period to initiate a longer-term project with the partners or undertake a shorter project with a specific outcome, they welcome both and other approaches and these can be detailed in your application.
 The residency period runs from January-June 2020 and the artist should be resident for a minimum of 4 months and a maximum of 6 months during this period. The residency offers the successful applicant a bursary of £14,000, which includes artist research and development fee, bursary for accommodation in Berwick-upon-Tweed and travel costs.
Completed application details should be sent to [email protected] by 5pm on Monday 14 October 2019.