Cultural Innovation: British Council launches £50,000 seed fund to boost India-UK Cultural Ties

• British Council India is investing £50,000 in a one of its kind cultural project
• It is a culmination of a five year programme that aims to introduce an enthusiastic Indian audience to the best contemporary arts of UK
• PM Narendra Modi and PM David Cameron announced a year long programme in 2017

In an attempt to strengthen the cultural ties between the nations of UK and India, British Council, India is funding a one of its kind cultural project. It plans on investing £50,000 (Rs 50 lakh approximately) in this project. In this innovation funding, the Council will select five projects by the end of July 2016. It will invest £10,000 in seed funding of each project.

In the Open Call, the details of the funding have been provided clearly. They are claiming that this is a culmination of a five year programme that aims to introduce an enthusiastic Indian audience to the best contemporary arts of UK. They have an ambitious aim for online audience, which are 10 million people in 2016 and 50 million people in 2017.

In the eligibility criteria, they've mentioned that the participant should be based in UK or India. He or she should have a track record of creating new digital projects or successful experiences that have reached new audiences. They have specified that it is acceptable if the audience that had been reached before had not been of the scale that the British Council is currently aiming for.

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"We want to have ideas from India and Britain and bring those ideas together to make brilliant new things. In return for this seed funding, we would like to see a prototype or proof of concept of your project that we can test with potential audiences in September and October 2016. Following user testing in autumn, we will make a number of commissions based on potential audiences and costs of projects. Full commissions must launch during 2017" said Alan Gemmell, director of British Council, reports business-standard.com.

Noon, UK time, Friday 08 July 2016 has been declared as the deadline for submission of applications.

The British Council is partnering with Manchester International Festival on a digital co-commission for 2017. If the project submitted to this open call is selected, it will be launched during the festival in June/July 2016.

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During the November 2015 visit of PM Narendra Modi to London, he and PM David Cameron has announced a year long programme in 2017. It is to celebrate the cultural ties between the two countries and the 70^th year of independence for India.

According to business-standard.com, Gemmell added: "With the British Council, we believe that culture has a powerful role to play in helping people understand one another. India's cultural relationship with Britain is incredibly important. We want to develop stronger cultural relations between Britain and India. We want to celebrate, reconnect, revive and inspire the next generation of people culturally. We want to develop stronger cultural relations between Britain and India."

The British Council is one of UK's international organisations that take various measures to strengthen the cultural ties between different nations. It also works at providing educational opportunities to the masses.

-The report is compiled by a Staff-writer at NewsGram.

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