International Prize 2020 – Convivial Clay

The 2020 Whitegold International Ceramic prize is currently open for submissions and the theme for this year is ‘Convivial Clay’. Our Quartz and Feldspar prizes will be awarded to the best projects that enable convivial community interactions through their engagement with food and clay..

Quartz Award – £10,000

Feldspar Award – £5,000

Deadline: Midnight 29th February 2020

Submission Guidelines

The prize is open to artists and artist collectives from across the world including collaborations between artists, cooks, brewers and food producers.

Artists, partnerships or collectives are invited to submit two recent projects that demonstrate their work with the inter-relationships of people, clay, soil and food. The Whitegold 2020 jury will then select a maximum of five artists or groups to develop a proposal for a community project in St Austell that brings clay, food and people together in a convivial way.

We are looking for art, craft and design using clay that combines environmental sustainability with creativity and welcome work that relates to cooking, eating, drinking, for creating a festive and sociable environment, ceramics for growing and even works that consider clay as a part of the soil and our life cycle. We are interested in environmentally friendly farming practices, in foraging, in locally and collectively grown produce as well as culinary delights that consider food miles, fairtrade and co-operative production.

Artists, partnerships or collectives selected for the second stage will be invited to propose a new project that involves working with a given community group in St Austell. Projects should have convivial social interactions at their heart and be clear about the ways in which they will bring people together to share skills, food and stories. Projects that have the potential to be sustained and developed by community groups after the festival are especially welcome.

The Whitegold jurors will review these five new proposals and select two finalists who will be allocated a budget of £2,500 each to produce and complete their project to coincide with the Whitegold Festival on 19th September 2020.

The Whitegold jurors will be invited to the Festival to experience the final outcomes and will work with the local community to make the final decision about who will win the Quartz award and who will get Feldspar.

Timeline and Key Stages 

• Jan 2020: Announcement of 2020 Whitegold Prize and call out for applications
• End Feb: First submission deadline
• End March: Shortlist announced
• End May: Deadline for submission of new project proposals
• End June – 2 finalist selected and awarded £2500 each to realise their idea for the Whitegold Festival
• September 19th – Whitegold Festival, Quartz and Feldspar winners announced

Submissions must be made through CuratorSpace using the link below. Please note to make a submission all artists must register with CuratorSpace before uploading details. CuratorSpace will guide you through this process.

https://www.curatorspace.com/opportunities/detail/whitegold-international-ceramics-prize/4103

For the purposes of the prize:

• an artist collective is understood as a group of artists working together towards a common objective
• Socially engaged practice, also referred to as social practice or socially engaged art, can include any artform which involves people and communities in practice, debate, collaboration or social