The 421 Artistic Research Grant supports practice-based research investigating contemporary social questions through interdisciplinary methodologies and active engagement with the researcher’s community. While this is not an academic grant, a strong interaction with the historical, geographical, and intellectual context of a grantee’s topic and medium is expected.

  
The grant supports practice-based research investigating contemporary social questions through interdisciplinary methodologies and active engagement with the researcher’s community. Creative practitioners can work through disciplines including but not limited to visual art and curations, design and technology, literary arts, culinary arts, music, theater and performance. The grant targets topics that investigate the intersections of these disciplines with social and cultural topics, such as communal and public spaces, languages and linguistics, transportation and mobility systems, urbanity and its social and cultural fabric, economics and migration, and art institutions and ecosystems. 

  
In the 2025 edition of the grant, projects that engage with questions of ecology & humans’ relationship to nature are encouraged, but not mandatory. 

421 Art Campus will award a minimum of 2 grantees a budget up to AED75,000 ($20,380) each to support their research and project.

Artistic Research Grant

The Residency Program supports creative practitioners with work that requires studio space, and who are looking for time and space to experiment. The five-month program takes place from February to June and July to November 2025 in the artist studios at 421 Arts Campus, MiZa. Designed for the creative community at large, the residency is multidisciplinary in focus and is open to practices in visual arts and curation, design and technology, music, literary arts, culinary arts, performance and theater, and other creative disciplines. The residency program prioritizes free experimentation without the pressures of a final outcome, but rather a focus on rigorous process and studio use. The residency will bring together three successful applicants for each cohort of the program. 

Six resident artists will be chosen to participate in the program which takes two cohorts a year, one that starts in February and the other in June. Three artists participate in the program at a time. Successful applicants will be awarded with a production to be employed for any equipment or material required for the completion and realization of their projects.

  
**The residency includes:**

* Private studio space;
* Living space for accepted residents not based in Abu Dhabi;
* Round trip travel for accepted residents not based in Abu Dhabi;
* Travel expenses;
* Stipend/per diem;
* Production budget.

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