2007 Awards report
Creating, sharing, achieving - promoting understanding via the arts
The 2007 winners of the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Awards were selected in August 2007 following a rigorous judging process. A record number of artists from 39 countries applied, with particularly strong applications from Nigeria and Pakistan.
The Award scheme aims to stimulate art in the Commonwealth and promote the association's values of diversity, sharing and building links and understanding between cultures and communities. Ten awards of up to £8,000 each are given to promising artists and craftspeople to enable them to spend time developing their art and sharing their skills in another Commonwealth country.
The scheme is built around the idea of residencies which, as Saida Salim, one of this year's winners from Pakistan, said, "Provides an ideal platform for exchange of ideas, philosophies, techniques as well as cultural information, between artists of diverse backgrounds."
This exchange of practice and ideas between artists of different cultural backgrounds also creates a stimulus and interest in art-making among a wide audience in countries to which the award winners travel and work.
At the heart of the scheme are core Commonwealth values of inclusiveness and collaboration. Some artists work collaboratively, sharing ownership of work with others in the community. Other Award winners are artist-educators, constantly sharing their skills, ideas and practices.
Award winners are asked to involve themselves in outreach beyond the immediate artistic communities. Previous winners have worked with crafts projects which enable people in rural areas to achieve economic independence. Others have worked in schools and in projects working with HIV/AIDS awareness programmes and slum regeneration.
Many artists highlight environmental issues which are pertinent across the globe.
Winning artists are exposed to different cultures and artistic communities. They take with them their own cultural traditions, viewpoints and experiences. They not only share these with the host communities, but in turn they return home with new experiences. In this way the awards aim to change individuals and to help those individuals change others.
A year of firsts
2007 was a year of firsts for the Award scheme. It was the first time the application form was available online, the first time the awards were judged online in the five different Commonwealth regions, the first time video art was included as a category and also the first time there have been winners from Cyprus, Mozambique and Uganda.
The increased use of the internet this year undoubtedly attracted new applicants. While word about the Awards still spread through traditional routes, increasingly information was also distributed via networks of websites, e-mailing lists and arts organisations. For the first time there were applications from some of the smaller Commonwealth countries such as Maldives, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Lesotho.
This outreach brings the Commonwealth and its values to people for whom it might otherwise be a remote institution. It also means that applicants from countries without a large artistic infrastructure can compete alongside those with developed art colleges, galleries and press.
Considerable innovations were made in the judging process which opened up the scheme and brought in new perspectives and approaches. This year applications were judged by regional panels using the online database of applications. Three judges were chosen for each of the five regions: Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Canada and Europe and the Pacific. These regional judges were familiar with the local and regional art scenes and, most importantly, with the needs of their own artistic communities. They are also invaluable contacts through whom to disseminate information in the future and to help Award winners set up appropriate placements.
All these innovations have strengthened the scheme, contributed to bringing cultures together and breaking down barriers, and made it relevant to the 21st century and the contemporary Commonwealth.
