Five up and coming artists will each receive £30,000 as the 2013 winners of the Sky Arts Futures Fund. The bursary, along with mentoring from senior staff at Sky and leaders in their industry, is designed to help develop their creative practice and take their work to the next level.

This year's winning artists are:

• Creative Producer Kate Whitley, 23 from Oxford, brings classical music out of the concert hall and into new locations. The Fund will allow Kate to turn her one off ‘classical club-night’ format into a series of concerts over the year. 
• Composer Mark Simpson, 24, originally from Liverpool, will compose a large scale work for ensemble, voices and electronics exploring the human fascination with cheating death, inspired by the John Gray’s 'The  Immortalization Commission' The fund will allow Mark me to focus his time completely on this project which will be the largest project I've attempted in my career to date.
• Digital Artist Lu Sisi, 27, a recent graduate from the Glasgow School of Art, will create a short film, which then becomes part of a live performance called The Age of Digital / Analogue. Sisi will also produce music for the performance and the fund will allow Lu to work on a bigger scale for the first time.
• Choreographer Aakash Odedra, 28 from Birmingham, will work with ARS Electronica Futurelab to bring together a live performance based on dyslexia. He will combine dance and cutting-edge digital and mechanical technology. The Fund will allow Aakash the opportunity to take choreograph a full length dance piece for the first time and drive forward his artistic ideas.
• Poet and writer Sabrina Mahfouz, 30 from London, is a writer and poet who will use the fund to set up a company that will produce poetry content in different forms and for diverse audiences over the year. The Fund will enable Sabrina the dedicated time to create lots of new poetry pieces in different forms, which she says, ‘is a rare and much needed opportunity for this side of my practice’.

The five winning artists were chosen by Sky Arts, IdeasTap and a panel of industry experts, including the fund’s five ambassadors; Mark Ball (Director, LIFT), David Micklem (Independent Producer), Julia Carruthers (Director, Dublin Dance Festival), Godfrey Worsdale (Director, BALTIC Centre for contemporary art) and Cameron Blackwood (Music Producer / Mixer).

The Fund is in its second year and run in partnership with IdeasTap. It is open to artists aged 18 to 30, who work in Theatre and Performance, Music, Visual Arts, Dance and as Creative Producers. It also forms part of Sky Arts’ wider support of the arts across the UK and Ireland including two television channels showcasing the best of arts and culture all day every day, as well as Sky Arts Ignition, partnering with leading arts organisations investing £200,000 in the creation of ground breaking new art works, projects and performances.

Applications for Sky Arts Futures Fund 2014 artists will open in September 2013.

“We’re delighted with the diversity of talent assembled in this year’s crop of Sky Arts Futures Fund winners,” comments James Hunt, Director, Sky Arts. “Supporting young artists at formative stages of their career is crucial to the future vitality of the arts in the UK, and we are proud that we’re able to do our bit to help.”

Peter De Haan, Chairman of IdeasTap, comments: “We’re delighted at IdeasTap to be collaborating with Sky Arts for a second year to invest in the UK and Ireland’s most exciting emerging creative talent through this life changing opportunity for young artists. These five deserving winners reflect the quality and diversity of the talent in our community of 90,000 young creatives.”

- ENDS -

For more information or interview requests please contact:
Katherine Solomon, Sky Arts, katherine.solomon@bskyb.com  0207 032 0599

SKY ARTS FUTURES FUND WINNERS, 2011/ 2012
Last year’s winners were 24 year old Opera Director Daisy Evans, 29 year old visual artist Phoebe Boswell, 25 year old theatre director Felix Mortimer, 24 year old animator Drew Roper and 30 year old live art artist Laurence Payot, For more information www.visit sky.com/skyartsignition

SKY ARTS
Sky Arts offers an eclectic mix of the best music, arts, biographies, chat shows, film, drama and comedy. Sky is the only broadcaster in the UK and Ireland with channels dedicated solely to the arts. Sky Arts now reaches more than 6 million viewers every month.

Sky Arts also seeks to connect with culture on the ground; creating and collaborating with the best of the arts in the UK and Ireland to bring new experiences to life. Sky Arts Ignition, launched in 2011, will support six arts organisations in the creation of brand new works offering £200k and amplification through Sky’s programming, marketing and technologies. Sky Arts Futures Fund supports five young artists a year with bursary of £30,000 each, enabling Sky Arts to back the creation of their new work as well as offering mentoring to nurture emerging talent.

The first major project Sky Arts Ignition: Doug Aitken - The Source was in partnership with Tate Liverpool who with Sky’s support commissioned world renowned artist, Doug Aitken to create a multi-media video installation in a specially designed structure, built in collaboration with British architect David Adjaye OBE. The work was Aitken’s first public installation in the UK and ran for four months from September 2012, receiving 50,000 visitors. To promote the opening of the exhibition, Aitken took over Sky Arts for 24 hours, curating a selection of special documentaries, films and exhibitions over one day exploring the creative process.

The second project will be Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace in partnership with the V&A. Memory Palace will open at the V&A on 18 June and run until 20 October 2013. For more information on Sky Arts, visit www.sky.com/arts 

IDEASTAP
IdeasTap is a charity that funds, connects and nurtures new creative talent. It was launched in December 2008 as the arts platform of The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust. The IdeasTap website currently has a membership of over 70,000 young creative people and provides a platform for them to connect, showcase their work and skills, find jobs and promote events and exhibitions of their work.

IdeasTap has awarded over £500,000 in direct cash funding to emerging artists since 2008. Primarily, this money is distributed through the Ideas Fund - an annual £150,000 funding programme from IdeasTap. The Ideas Fund is a financial and mentoring award that recognises and celebrates young creative talent, and anyone between the ages of 16-25 can apply. Since 2008 IdeasTap has provided over 35,000 young people with direct funding, expert mentoring or the opportunity to work with a leading arts organisation.

Through its partnership programme, IdeasTap works to deliver these life-changing opportunities with: Sky Arts, Magnum Photos, Old Vic New Voices, National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, the National Student Drama Festival, HighTide, The British Film Institute and mac Birmingham. For more information on IdeasTap, please visit www.ideastap.com

SKY AND YOUNG CREATIVE TALENT
Sky Arts Ignition: Futures Fund expands Sky’s commitment to developing and nurturing young talent. Sky has a heritage of supporting young talent and developing skills in the creative industries with existing schemes such as Fast Forward, which offers 16-18-year-olds paid, year-long placements to gain experience in a major broadcaster, and Sky Futures, an annual two day workshop that offers students taster lessons in all aspects of production, marketing and scheduling, as well as a host of traditional work experience opportunities, internships and a formal graduate scheme.