To Celebrate Three Decades of WWW, British Council India Invites Projects from India & UK
Bangalore: British Council India is inviting proposals from creative professionals in UK & India who have a compelling idea that could engage & embrace millions of young people across India, the UK & the world, to mark 30 years of the World Wide Web (WWW) in March 2019. Through this, the British Council will explore what artists and art of tomorrow look like through digital creativity and give an event to individuals, creative artists, boutique creative firms, coders & gamers to present their work to Indian & global audiences.
Prime tool for billions of people to communicate on the Internet, the World Wide Web has been pivotal to the growth of the information age connecting 400 million Indians & four billion people globally. It empowers countries to run seamlessly, governments to give services to their citizens, businesses to talk to their global audiences, education to be made accessible, or simply for entertainment.
The Digital Open Call, open for proposals that 'celebrate diversity, inclusion, equal opportunity and freedom of expression', intends to examine the changing concept of connection by supporting digital culture projects inspired by the Internet’s connectivity and plunging into what future would look like.
Speaking about the initiative, Tom Birtwistle, Director, North India- British Council says, “It is said the best way to predict the future is to create it. That happened 30 years ago when Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. Today, through our Digital Call, we hope to use this milestone to explore how digital creativity may reshape our world again. We are looking to identify innovative and creative ideas and solutions that inspire and connect millions of young people in India, UK and around the world through art and culture. ”
The call is open to anyone based in India or the UK having a track record of developing new digital projects or experiences that have strongly reached new audiences, preferably a broad and diverse group of young people. The project proposals can be submitted by January 31. Submissions will be evaluated on various parameters that include how your proposal demonstrates great, contemporary creativity, the extent to which your idea connects to the thematics of the 30th anniversary of the world wide web as specified above, potential to reach a large and diverse audience, previous experience, and cost. Moreover, the applicants should be willing to share their experience on this project with UK or Indian partners so that there can be a mutual exchange of learning during the process.
The Council’s first open call for digital ideas funded Saptan Stories, a collaboration between the British Council & Oscar-winning British Studio Aardman Animations storytelling project that ran for seven weeks engaged two millions of people, including those in India. Workshops were carried in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad & Mumbai relinquishing 400 participants face to face. The project that attracted 160,000 visitors, 97 percent of whom were from India, with most users accessing the site via their Android mobile devices (94 percent) and visitors spent an average of 1 minute on the website gained 18 million social media reach & press readership of over 93 million. “We have run exciting projects before including Saptan Stories, a crowdsourced storytelling project that ran for 7 weeks, in collaboration with Aardman Animations. As the web continues to evolve, we hope ideas from our digital call can show us how creativity, collaboration and culture may influence what the future of our connections with each other might look like,” adds Tom.
The UK’s international organisation for cultural relations & educational opportunities, The British Council operates with over 100 countries in the fields of arts & culture, English language, education & civil society, and more; encouraging cultural, scientific, technological and educational co-operation with the United Kingdom; and changing people’s lives through access to education, skills, qualifications, culture and society.
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