Arts Collaboration

This programme was closed in 2005.

The Arts Collaboration programme was started in 1996 to forge new connections between individuals/groups of artists and their specific practices to enable convergences and break new ground for inter-disciplinary practices and creativities. It encouraged projects that developed new work or adaptations, allowed for the exchange of training methods and skills, extended the reach of the arts, developed new techniques of presentation, and addressed issues that concerned the arts in general or explored new confluences by drawing from other disciplines and practices, among others.

Between 1996 and 2005 the programme supported 42 projects.

While the programme proved to be a fertile ground for various synergies, the unwieldy aspects of collaboration as a mechanism were recognised as major challenges. Also, this limited IFA’s support to practice only through the process of collaborations, which was restrictive. After a meeting held with grantees and experts from the field in 2005, it was decided that the programme would be closed. However, IFA wanted to continue to support arts practitioners in the field. In the same year 2005, IFA launched the Extending Arts Practice programme that opened up support for arts practice with a much larger scope.