develop your talents

What is characteristic of the design sector is its large range of practices, disciplines and approaches. However, there is also one common denominator; social designers, landscape architects, coders, jewellery designers and bio-designers – all of them can only live up to their added social value through investments that develop their specific artistic and creative capacity. From the starter fresh from art school, to those in their mid-career or the advanced talents – they all need new incentives and investments.

Talent Development Grant Programme

For one year, the Talent Development Grant Scheme offers designers and makers in the field of design, architecture or digital culture the scope to invest in their own artistic and professional development. During this year, makers engage in research, experiment and substantive understanding while searching for collaborations and methods to make their work visible and strengthen their own cultural entrepreneurship.

To increase the Talent Development Grant Scheme’s reach, the grant scheme has a scouting procedure in place. Every year, young makers who have developed themselves outside regular design education are selected on Scout Nights.

Talent Platform

Since 2013, the Fund has supported over 250 up-and-coming designers and makers in setting up their practice through the Talent Development Grant Programme. You can see this on our Talent Platform, on which we show off the individual practices of the subsidized designers and makers and offer a source of inspiration for other makers and commissioning parties.

open calls

Besides the Talent Development Grant Scheme, we channel our focus on aspects of talent development through various open calls. For example, the Open Call for Building on Talent strengthens the link between starting designers and the field of work. With this grant, we can finance intensive programmes at experienced design agencies, which, for three months, work together with the starting designer or maker on a course of research or an experiment around a current design challenge formulated by the agency.

other grant schemes

With the exception of the grant schemes aimed at cultural institutions, up-and-coming designers and makers can also apply for our other grants. Applications can be submitted for projects whose theme, issue, setup, method and expertise involved are determined by the applicant personally. See, for example, the Experiment Grant Scheme for small-scale experiment-driven projects in the area of design, architecture and digital culture.