Liberty 2025 Open Call: Artistic Work

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Please note this role is reserved for a disabled person. By this, we mean “all people who face disableist [including audist or neurotypist] barriers”, or “people who identify themselves as disabled and/or are identified by others as disabled in society”. Read more here.

The work commissioned could include creative performances presented live to audiences, screenings, interactive events, exhibitions or installations, talks, workshops, and discussions. It could be aimed at a general audience or a specific audience.

The minimum amount that you can apply for is £500. The maximum is £20,000.

As a guide, we are likely to take forward the following number of applications. We expect the project you are applying for to be near-completion with a plan for completion, or complete at the point of application, and the majority of the budget to go to presentation costs.

We are anticipating programming the below number of projects. This is just a guide to help with applications. The number and scale of the acts in the confirmed line up may vary.

• 1 x headline: up to £20,000
• 2 x large-scale: up to £10,000
• 4 x mid-scale: up to £5,000
• 3 x small-scale: up to £1,500
• 5 x micro: up to £500

For guidance on what we’d expect from each of these financial bands, please read the FAQs here.

There are two further artistic and creative contracts available, please see these below:

• Artistic contract to create a care space for the festival: Find out more and apply
• Artistic contract to create access training for the festival.Find out more and apply

Wandsworth Council has engaged CRIPtic Arts as the Creative Producer of Liberty Festival to manage and deliver the artistic aims of the Festival. CRIPtic Arts will be the first point of contact with Artists and manage all aspects of the contract and commission on behalf of the Council. Wandsworth Council bears overall responsibility for Liberty, as part of its delivery of the London Borough of Culture.  

*When we talk about disabled people, we mean “all people who face disableist [including audist or neurotypist] barriers”, or “people who identify themselves as disabled and/or are identified by others as disabled in society”. To find out more about what we mean by this, please look at CRIPtic Arts FAQs page here
 

What is Liberty?

In April 2025, Wandsworth will be taking the title of London Borough of Culture, as awarded by the Mayor of London. As part of this, Wandsworth will host the Mayor’s flagship Liberty Festival, a vibrant and inclusive series of events that celebrate the best of disabled artists. The festival will take place from 24-28 September 2025 across venues in the borough, creating a joyful, radically inclusive space where everyone is welcome.

Artistic Vision for Liberty

As the Mayor’s flagship disability arts festival, Liberty is a bold platform for work by some of the most exciting disabled creatives. CRIPtic’s vision as producing partner in 2025 is to embed these artists at the heart of the Wandsworth community - interconnecting with schools, collaborating with local groups, and bringing artistic work into community spaces across the Borough.

We are passionate about presenting work that explores the disabled experience—past, present and future—celebrating our existence and advocating for our rights. Equally, we seek work that emerges from a crip lens and addresses topics far beyond disability, challenging perspectives, questioning norms, and defying expectations. We welcome work that pushes artistic boundaries—across form, theme, and style—moving beyond tropes and traditional narratives to create something fresh, resonant, and vital. 

In 2025, Liberty will fill Wandsworth with the richness and diversity of disability arts, with work that speaks to everyone—from children’s workshops to dementia-friendly performances, from community engagement projects to groundbreaking creations—and with access for disabled people existing at the heart of it. It will reach new audiences, bringing disabled-led art to local businesses, venues, and partners. The artists and projects will be central to making this a reality.

For artists, participating should also be an opportunity - for growth, learning and development. Our commissions will support disabled creatives at every stage of their careers—from emerging talent to established artists

What work are we looking for?

We want to hear from disabled creatives working across all artforms and disciplines, from live performance and digital art to community engagement projects and large-scale public works. We want work that is ready for presentation or exhibition, with minimal development required, and where it can be delivered at a high quality within budget.

We are committed to supporting a diverse range of work—from intimate storytelling to large-scale productions, panel discussions to interactive workshops, craft events to art installations. Whether you are an emerging artist who has just created their first piece, or an established creative with a major new work, we want to hear from you. 

We welcome proposals that:

• Go beyond tropes of disability —whether exploring the disabled experience past, present, or future, or using a crip lens to engage with broader themes that challenge societal norms and redefine artistic possibilities.
• Work that is immersive, engaging and accessible, especially for disabled people.
• Take a creative approach to accessibility, ensuring work is inclusive and engaging.
• Advocate for disabled people’s rights, highlighting issues, experiences, and triumphs through art.
• Attract new audiences to disability arts, reaching beyond traditional spaces and engaging the wider community.
• Work that has the potential to tour across other UK and international arts festivals.

This opportunity is open to both individuals and organisations working in any artform, as long as the creative lead on the project is a disabled person.

Please note that only one application will be accepted from each lead artist or organisation. However, artists and organisations can be mentioned in multiple applications, as long as they are only leading on one application.

We are particularly keen to support disabled individuals who continue to face significant barriers in accessing opportunities in both mainstream and disability arts, and who are therefore underrepresented in the arts.

All applicants must have the right to work or operate in England.

Co-producing with schools & community groups

A key focus of Liberty Festival 2025 is fostering meaningful collaborations between artists, schools, and community groups, creating rich opportunities for participation, learning, and artistic expression. 

For the headline, large-scale and mid-scale applications, we expect artists to connect with a school or community group in the borough (e.g. by delivering a workshop, showing them your work for feedback). This is not required for small-scale or micro-scale applications, but is encouraged.

This collaboration can take many forms, including:

• Co-creation & inspiration: Engaging with a focus group of students or community members to help shape your work through shared experiences, ideas, and feedback.
• Hands-on workshops: Delivering creative sessions designed for schools or community groups, offering participants the chance to engage directly with your artistic process.
• Exclusive previews & opportunities for feedback: Inviting groups to attend rehearsals, preview performances, or work-in-progress showings, allowing for valuable community input as your work evolves.

We also encourage artists to propose their own ideas for engaging with schools and community groups in ways that align with their practice and creative vision.

Not connected with any Wandsworth-based schools or community groups? No problem! We have a list of schools and groups eager to collaborate with artists as part of the festival and can help facilitate connections if your application is successful.

A note on project budget

We are committed to fair pay. We recognise that both the arts and disability sectors often have stretched budgets that can result in unfair pay. We ask that you budget for your time carefully, fully reflecting your day rate and the time you will spend on the work. We encourage you to refer to sector guidance on fair pay, such as by Artists' Union England.

We have provided a budget template located with the application form below, and encourage you to think about:

• Costs of paying people involved in the project
• Costs of other artistic elements e.g. costumes, materials
• Costs of overheads like travel, printing, specialist technology
• Costs of making work accessible to audiences (see below)
• A small contingency budget

We are expecting applications to come from creatives who have a piece of work completed or near-completed, such that the budget is used to cover the costs of the work being shared at Liberty, rather than it covering extensive development and rehearsal.

What project costs will Liberty cover?

We will provide the below:

• Venues & spaces unless specialist venues are required
• Staffing unless specialist or additional staffing is required
• Basic/standard tech where it is included in venue hire (depending on the venue), e.g. lighting rigs, PA system, projectors
• Marketing for the overall festival and all events running as part of it including but not limited to; website, event listings, social media posts, flyers, posters, press coverage.
• Costs associated with project evaluation e.g. creating feedback forms, surveys, surveying audiences.

If you require specialist tech, or tech/materials that are not provided by the venue, you will need to cost this into your budget. If you have any specific space requirements, e.g. lighting rigs or projection, please let us know in your application. If you are not sure whether the tech you require counts as specialist, please contact [javascript protected email address].

The majority of our programming will be at Battersea Arts Centre, which has spaces suitable for exhibitions, installations, talks, workshops, and performances. If you would like to propose an alternative venue / space in Wandsworth we are open to this.

A note on access funding

As a disability-led organisation, we believe in accessible work and are keen to support projects that engage with access creatively. We see access as a shared responsibility and are looking to support work where access is embedded at its heart. This can take many forms and look very different, depending on the type of project you are working on.

We have an additional access budget for the festival, however this budget is finite. While we want to be able to support as many access costs as possible, we may not be able to cover all access costs for all commissioned artists. To help everyone understand how we’re managing requests for personal access funding, we’ve outlined our process in this document. Please find this here.

Making your work accessible to audiences

As part of the application process, we will ask you to consider how you will embed audience access in your piece/event and to include within your overall budget a breakdown of the costs assigned to making your work accessible to disabled audiences. We will take the accessibility of projects into account when making decisions on what to programme. 

During the programming process, we will work with artists and access providers to finalise provisions and delivery. You will need to ensure your timelines for delivery allow time to integrate this properly. Please read more about making your work accessible to audiences here.

Personal access costs

We will also ask you for a personal access costs budget. We will not take the size of your personal access budget into consideration when selecting projects for the festival, ensuring that projects are selected on merit. We will assign budgets for personal access costs once we have made decisions on the festival programming, and will work with artists in cases where we may not be able to provide the entirety of their requested personal access costs budget.