51zero team aims to fund their open-call participants to enable local and international emerging artists to take part in the 2019 festival!

Our main ambitions as a festival are to encourage cultural collaboration and to foster emerging artists, help them showcase their work and gain further recognition.

In the face of government cuts to arts funding and the breakdown of cross-cultural conversations, your contribution is vital.

We want to keep on promoting new, exciting talent from the region and those from abroad who want to exhibit here, attracting visiting audiences from all over, to the area. We need your support to make this happen!

What is 51zero?

51zero is a festival based in Kent, which has successfully promoted moving image and contemporary art in the local community and has connected artists of the area to international arts programmes since 2012.

Our 2019 festival will present exciting artists working in film, video and sound, combining large-scale moving image projections, installations and live music.

Our past events and collaborations can be found on our website.

Why do we need your help?

This year, we are delighted that our open calls have been inundated with responses - many from emerging artists who have not been exhibited before.

Unfortunately, because we are such a small organisation, we have limited resources; our grant from Arts Council England (and other small supportive organisations) covers some of our basic costs, but our budget is not big enough to exhibit all the open call submissions received and to invite international artists who applied without your help!

We would love to feature all of the new artists who have reached out to us - but we need your help to make this happen!

Who are the artists?

We hope to include students from the University for the Creative Arts as well as unrepresented artists from the area, in an effort to give a platform to those whose work has not yet been exhibited in a professional programme.

As well as exhibiting Medway and Kent's artists, 51zero hopes to host applicants from abroad to the festival. One of these is up-and-coming Italian artist Giacamo Sengatin, who comes from a small town in the Euganean hills and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Verona. He has been working hard developing his artistic practice and last year he won a residency at the prestigious Bevilaqua la Masa Foundation.

Giacomo tells us,

We deeply believe in the value of cultural exchange and collaboration across borders and by inviting Giacamo to show his work with us, we hope to give him wider exposure and offer him exciting new experiences.

How can you help?

By donating to 51zero's crowdfunder, you can help us to curate our most inclusive and ambitious programme to date. With this extra funding, 51zero festival will be able to widen its programme to include as many of the responses to our open call as possible, promoting local and international emerging artists, unrepresented artists and students.

We will use this funding to pay for and contribute to:

- Subsidised transport for international artists

- Venues to stage additional film-screenings

- Extra equipment and technical help

- Invigilation and coordination of additional events

- Interpretation

By supporting 51zero in this project, you will be providing immense support and exposure for new artists and promoting vital cultural community events, ensuring they remain free and inclusive to all.

Thank you!