Makeshift Publics supports artists to explore ideas of place in a changed city.

Please note, applications are now closed.

Makeshift Publics is a three-year investigation by artists into the new futures we can create under the pressures of pandemic disruption.

Find out about our 2020-21 cohort here, and our 2022-23 cohort here.

Each year will see artists creating work adjacent to each other, sharing learning and experience, and acting as portals onto the diverse communities to which they’re intimately connected. Through ongoing, sustained engagement and a profound curiosity towards the meaning of art in a time of crisis, these artists will focus on the practical ways that art can rebuild our shared public sphere.

Through a series of facilitated online Labs and gatherings, the program explores new contexts for contemporary art in a supportive environment.

Makeshift Publics Facilitators determine the key themes of the program and design a creative process that emphasises cohesion, connection and knowledge sharing. The Facilitators are practicing artists and arts workers who bring a breath of experience and knowledge. Meet the Facilitators here.

Artists are provided with $18,000 artist fee plus superannuation, as well as access to producing and support across the year to undertake their research.

This program runs until 2023. Applications are now closed.

Header Image: Mass Movement by Latai Taumoepeau, Refuge 2021. Photo by Bryony Jackson

Image Description:  A group of bodies in bright colourful clothing walk a long a shoreline with large pine trees and a cityscape of Melbourne in the background across a bay. The image has a glitchy effect applied to it that stretches across the lower third and distorts the bodies and the pathway.

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