Recruitment now open for cultural production curriculum The Pattern

Fusion Prize winner Play Nice is recruiting its first cohort of Londoners aged 18-25 for the Pattern, a ground-breaking curriculum in cultural production for future community leaders and curators.

Created by Nate Agbetu and Ayo Fagbemi of award-winning London based initiative Play Nice, The Pattern is an incubator scheme and curriculum designed to give future community leaders, cultural producers and aspiring creatives from underrepresented groups the tools and infrastructure they need to develop community projects.

The Fusion Prize is a new national award established to help foster the fusion skills needed for young people to thrive in the modern workplace, funded by Foundation for Future London, City of London and Culture Mile.

The curriculum will explore research, ideation, curation and production, led by four established grassroots cultural curators and their unique briefs:

• Naeem Davis, co-founder of BBZ London, a curatorial collective highlighting the artistry of QTIPOC (Queer, Trans and Intersex, People of Colour) people across the world. Their brief explores developing equitable projects for Black Trans voices.
• Lamisa Khan, co-founder of Muslim Sisterhood, a curatorial collective championing the stories of intersectional Muslim womxn. Her brief focuses on exploring Islamic art forms that transcend borders.
• Noga-Levy Rapoport, ambassador for UK Student Climate Network, who has mobilized young people all over the capital to take over central London for the climate strike. She will be encouraging her cohort to develop guides and materials for supporting and sharing care in their communities.
• Lavinya Stennett, historian, writer, recent first-class SOAS graduate and founder of the Black Curriculum-a social enterprise working to teach and support the teaching of Black history. She will work with her cohort to explore how the black community have shaped culture through music.

Over the course of February 2021, 20 young people will be granted a curatorial fee of £20,000 to create work for their communities and pitch them to Foundation for Future London and Culture Mile‘s core partners such as Barbican, London Symphony Orchestra and Guildhall.

The deadline for applications is Thursday 28 January 2021 at 6pm.

Nate Agbetu & Ayo Fagbemi, Play Nice, said:

“In our eyes, you shouldn’t have to ‘make it out of the ends’ to make the creative work you’re passionate about or to reach the spaces that you get excited by. The projects you can build from your own bedroom have so much more purpose and grit than anything you could make in an open plan office. We believe that if you take time to listen to what your community wants, you can build what it needs and make a career out of that because the future is compassionate, multifaceted and responsive.”

If you’re interested in trying out the tactics without doing the course, The Pattern curriculum will be made available to download for free from the website later this spring.

For more information on The Pattern and to apply, see The Pattern website playnice.london