For Season 02 + 03, Refraction DAO will launch a Creative Grants programme through an open call worldwide to the community. The grants will be awarded across 3 funding tiers, totalling up to 100k $USDC, and will be divided between event and commission submissions. All grants will be awarded with a requirement for production, which will support, represent and live alongside the previous projects collected, performed and facilitated by the DAO.
Shortcut to S02 Creative Grant application here.
The Creative Grants programme allows us to decentralize our operations and collection, encouraging members and future members to realize projects around the world with direct financial support. The programme is composed of 3 tiers, allocated across events and community programming, and commissions for the Refraction collection and editorial platform. The tiers are as follows:
All successful grant applications will have a requirement for production, with funding across the 3 tiers allocated in equal parts to event and community projects:
Members of the Curatorial guild will oversee the programme and proposal process, and bring in guilds and Refraction contributors as needed depending on the funding proposals received. The team will assist applicants on their proposals, especially in requests for Refraction internal resource support.
The Curatorial guild will assess applications using the following criteria when selecting proposals to bring to the Community Snapshot:
Season 2 – Call to apply & decision making
Season 3 – Grant proposal production
Refraction’s Curatorial guild is in alignment with the wider DAO principles and mission, programming events and hosting commissions from artists, collectives and partners which reimagine art making and presentation practices, while remaining in dialogue with the environments in which they exist.
All artists and partners are onboarded into the DAO (if not already members) when participation is confirmed in efforts to redistribute economic upside back to creators, enable collective ownership, and foster new models of organization.
The Curatorial guild considers and executes all elements of production (venue, budgeting, staffing, backline, hospitality, ticketing) when planning events, and works closely with the Marketing, Community and Editorial guilds to ensure the event is amplified and archived effectively by way of audio and visual recordings, community discussions, social and press outreach.
In some instances, brand partnerships help us bring curatorial programming to life. The Curatorial guild works alongside the Partnerships team to establish relationships which drive value back to the DAO, and ensure that external partner needs are met.
The Curatorial guild and Refraction work on NFT Drops with the artists in the DAO in two formats.
The Refraction Collection involves works collected by our Curatorial and Collection team as well as donated by artists in the DAO. Works are collected through an internal DAO collection fund, as well as works donated to the DAO, both from Founding and Contributing artists and collectors who support the actions of Refraction. All artists collected are also offered tokens in the DAO as an artist member. For the Creative Grants programme this will be opened up for proposals from the greater community.
Refractions collection reflects how the DAO see’s our place within the larger sphere of digital and time based art today. All works in our exhibitions are part of the Refraction Collection.
We are in the process of launching a platform where we collaborate with our artists and partners on ongoing Drops. Drops will run on our platform and/or partner platforms, depending on what makes sense from a curatorial perspective. We strongly recommend any interested artists or collectives reach out to the curatorial committee.
Refraction editorial exists to support the DAO and its members, and further the DAO and festival’s mission in line with our principles. Editorial pieces can focus on wider themes, trends and scenes related to the DAO, electronic music or visual art, often with a direct link to an artist who is a member or playing an event, or otherwise somehow involved with the DAO.
Editorial is overseen by Raf and Andrew, with a rotating team of staff writers and freelance writers who can pitch ideas, and exists to support both audio and visual (or both) artists and projects. Examples of pieces can include: artist profiles, trend pieces, scene pieces, Q&A interviews, research essays and profiles of work or NFT drops by Refraction artists. Formats are open-ended and word count and style are determined on a case-by-case basis. Pieces that relate to Refraction and the current season’s theme are highly encouraged and prioritized.
Refraction Radio features content centered around music, art, and culture. Refraction’s ethos, principles and curatorial framework inform the stories we tell and how we tell them.
Our ambition is to showcase a broad variety of formats categorized in the following strands:
Our curatorial team puts an emphasis on contextualizing audio/visual media via editorial, research, and presentation, to fully realize its cultural value and impact. We encourage new ideas, systems, and experimentations with new technologies to bring about different ways audio/visual media can be presented, distributed, valued, and preserved online.
To apply for our S02 Creative Grants fill out our Typeform here.
Artists Connie Bakshi and Ellie Pritts reflect on how AI influences their work and perspectives on storytelling, identity, and the evolving role of the artist following their curation in Livepeer x Refraction's Limitless AI exhibit in Bangkok.
