Apply now for the
Diasporas Now U.K. Tour
2025-2026

Open Call:
Diasporas Now U.K. Tour 2025-2026
Macrocosmic Futures

Diasporas Now, in partnership with the V&A Museum, South London Gallery, Spike Island, and Primary, announce an open call for Global Majority artists working in live art for a national tour of commissioned performances under the theme of Macrocosmic Futures.

Details: 

Diasporas Now will commission six performances by Global Majority artists over four evenings at U.K. arts institutions across Bristol (Spike Island), Nottingham (Primary), and London (V&A Museum, South London Gallery). The commissions will be selected via national open call by the Diasporas Now judging panel and representatives from the partner institutions. 

For this open call, Diasporas Now seeks proposals for performances that embody the themes of Macrocosmic Futures, working with live art mediums that span performance art, dance, visual art, and experimental music. 

About Macrocosmic Futures: 

Diasporas Now’s 2025-2026 tour theme Macrocosmic Futures combines ancestral practices with new technologies as tools of divination toward preferred futures – rescripting interconnected narratives from the microcosm of our embodied realities to the macrocosm of our political and ecological landscapes.

Drawing from the framework of Afrofuturism and speculative fiction, Macrocosmic Futures widens the scope to pan-diasporic, pre-colonial perspectives – how can we relate to ourselves, to each other, and to more-than-human consciousness, when we centre values outside the historical trajectories of colonialism and capitalist extraction? What rituals can we co-create as future ancestors in the face of planetary transformation? 

Diasporas Now: Macrocosmic Futures is supported by the Arts Council England. 

Structure and Fees: 

Each of the six selected commissions will be awarded £1,050, with the suggested budget breakdown:

  • £300 artist fee x 2 performances at Bristol (Spike Island) or Nottingham (Primary), and London (V&A Museum or South London Gallery) 

  • £200 research and development stipend

  • £250 travel and accommodation stipend 

All artists will be provided AV, production, marketing, and curatorial support between Diasporas Now and partner institutions. 

Eligibility:

  • Deadline for applications is Monday, 6 October at midnight (selection outcomes  will be announced in the first week of November)

  • Collaborative and collective applications are welcomed, but fees are fixed per application

  • All applicants must be living and working in England 

  • All applicants, and at least 50% of collaborations or collectives, must identify as Global Majority

  • All applicants must be working across mediums suited for live performance, and include proposals of a duration of 20-30 minutes

  • All applicants must confirm in-person availability for 12 December 2025, and 26 February, 3 June, and 26 June 2026 (each performance will take place on only two of these dates, but event allocation will be decided by the curatorial panel and not by artists’ requests)

  • The application can propose an adaptation of an existing work, or a new performance, relating to the themes of Macrocosmic Futures

About Diasporas Now:

Diasporas Now is a live art community and cultural agency that champions artists of the Global Majority through collaborative performance incubation, institutional residencies, curated programming, and alternative arts education.