General Overview
Applications must be submitted through Submittable.
The Center for Art & Advocacy will accept applications from creatives working in visual art, film, music, creative writing, performance, design, and multidisciplinary practices for the 2025 Right of Return Fellowship from September 1, 2024, through October 4, 2024. For the second year in a row, Right of Return is partnering with Frieze and Endeavor Impact to present the Frieze Los Angeles 2025 Impact Prize, which will recognize a visual artist who contributes their talents towards issues of social justice and mass incarceration.
The Right of Return Fellowship is open to directly impacted creatives from every discipline. For the 7th annual cohort, a panel of external reviewers will select six new 2025 Right of Return Fellows from our open-call applicant pool to receive a $20,000 grant, mentorship, and community building.
The 2025 Frieze Impact Prize will be awarded to a visual artist or experimental filmmaker who is either a Right of Return alumnus or one of the six new fellows. One artist will be selected to receive the Prize, which will award them $25,000 and the opportunity to showcase their work at Frieze Los Angeles, which takes place February 20 – 23, 2025, at Santa Monica Airport.
Only one application must be completed to be considered for both the Right of Return Fellowship and the Frieze Impact Prize.
Right of Return Fellowship
A fellowship for directly impacted artists.
“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.”
– Paul Robeson
The Center for Art & Advocacy’s Right of Return Fellowship invites directly impacted artists to propose art projects aimed at transforming our criminal legal and immigration systems, to reduce their scale and reach.
Artists have always played a critical role in social movements as culture-makers and catalysts for change. Right of Return Fellows exist and work at the forefront of social movements and have the unique power to translate complex and nuanced ideas into powerful experiences. The goal of the Right of Return Fellowship is to support the creation of new bodies of work that uplift the voices of people directly impacted by the criminal justice system, reflect the humanity of criminalized and incarcerated people, and build public will for ambitious and visionary change.
ARTIST RETREAT
If selected, Right of Return Fellows will be asked to commit to participating in a group retreat in spring 2025 and be invited to a multi-cohort retreat in following years. The Right of Return retreats are meant to foster community, develop political advocacy skills, and support practice sustainability. If COVID-19 or other circumstances makes in-person convenings impossible, abbreviated versions of the retreat will be held online.
THERAPY INITIATIVE
During the course of this fellowship, all fellows are encouraged to engage in at least 6 hours of a trauma healing modality of their choice. The Center will be responsible for coordinating the logistics and ensuring services are financially covered. Fellows are welcome to try multiple modalities including but not limited to: talk therapy, EMDR, somatic coaching, group therapy, art therapy, and more.
FELLOWSHIP GRANT
The Right of Return Grant is $20,000 total: $10,000 artist award, $10,000 for project materials and production. Selected fellows will be asked to provide a proposed overall budget for the project and a project summary upon completion. A project budget is not required for the application.
The Center is the third partner for the Frieze Impact Award since it was established in 2020. The prize draws inspiration from Mark Bradford’s Life Size (2019), a work created on the occasion of the inaugural Frieze Los Angeles in 2019, which exposed the inequitable aspects of the criminal justice system.
For the second year, the Center for Art & Advocacy is partnering with Frieze and Endeavor Impact to present the fourth annual Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize. The 2025 Impact Prize will be awarded to a visual artist who has benefited from the Right of Return Fellowship and recognizes their contribution to the campaign to end mass incarceration. Furthering the mission of both The Center and Frieze, this partnership intends to leverage art as a powerful tool to expose the inequities within our criminal justice system.
FRIEZE LOS ANGELES 2025 IMPACT PRIZE
The Impact Prize comprises a $25,000 award, as well as shipping and installation costs for the exhibition of artwork at Frieze Los Angeles 2025. The art fair will take place February 20 – 23, 2025.
AWARD NOTIFICATION
The Frieze Impact Prize winner will be notified via email in mid-December. Applicants may be contacted during the review process by a Frieze representative if additional information about their work is necessary for consideration.
PREVIOUS AWARDEES
You can read more about 2024 Right of Return Fellow, Gary Tyler’s successful experience as the 2024 Frieze Impact Prize winner HERE.
For All Applicants to the 2025 Right of Return Fellowship
The Right of Return Fellowship seeks to support directly impacted artists with a demonstrated capacity to advance social change and a clear vision for utilizing their creative practice to end mass incarceration.
More specifically:
- Directly impacted artists of all creative disciplines, age 18 or older at the time of the application. We do not fund organizations or non-profits, only individual artists.
- We define the word “artist” in broad terms to include creatives who work in visual art, film, music, creative writing, performance, design, and multidisciplinary practices.
- In the context of this Fellowship, “directly impacted” includes those who have themselves been incarcerated, charged, or convicted, including felony convictions; people who were detained in migrant detention centers but who have now attained U.S. citizenship by the time of this application’s open.
- Artists must collaborate with an advocacy organization during the development and/or execution of their proposed project (collaborating organizations do not need to be secured at the time of application and The Center for Art & Advocacy can help connect fellows to advocates).
- Artists may be at any stage of their career, with or without formal training.
- Projects and applicants must be U.S. based. This includes all 50 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico.
- The Center for Art & Advocacy seeks a diverse cohort of fellows with regard to race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and experience.
For Applicants Who Want to be Considered for the 2025 Frieze Impact Prize
- Only artists working in the visual arts or experimental film will be considered for the Frieze Impact Prize.
- Creatives working in disciplines other than the visual arts and experimental film–including non-experimental film, music, creative writing, performance, design, and multidisciplinary practices, are eligible for the Right of Return Fellowship, but will not be considered the Frieze Impact Prize.
Application Open Date:
September 1, 2024 8:00 A.M. EST
Application Close Date:
October 4, 2024 11:59 P.M. EST
Fellows Notified:
Mid-December 2024
Frieze Impact Awardee Notified:
Cohort 7 Fellowship Year:
January 2025—December 2025
Frieze Los Angeles:
February 20, 2025—February 23, 2025
Cohort 7 Fellowship Retreat:
May 2025
Note:
Right of Return Fellows are expected to create a new project or body of work within a 12-month period ending Dec 1, 2025.
The Frieze Impact Prize is for an applicant’s existing work, or works that are in progress but can be completed before February 1st, 2025.