DEADLINE EXTENDED: 2021 CatchLight Fellowship

The global pandemic and movement for equity and justice presents our society with urgent challenges and opportunities for change and we believe visual storytellers have a crucial role in reflecting this changing landscape while also seizing opportunities to advance representation and dialogue. As we open our 2021 CatchLight Fellowship we are looking for candidates who are thinking through the impact of this moment in the long-term and embracing this opportunity to lead the field in creative and innovative ways. 

The CatchLight Fellowship, accompanied by a $30,000 award, serves as an incubator — a place for innovative leaders in the visual storytelling field to receive financial support, unlock individual potential, grow, and leverage partnerships. The Fellowship cultivates a vibrant community of creative thought leaders whose work will be enhanced by collaboration, personal development, and networking. 

When the pandemic hit last year in the midst of our 2020 Fellowship judging we took a moment to pause and reflect on the uniqueness of this crisis and the broader needs of the visual storytelling field. Ultimately, what became clear was the need to invest in leadership was as strong as ever. Last year CatchLight supported Josue Rivas’ collaborative approach moving the field of visual storytelling toward a paradigm of healthy collaborations and healing, Annie Tritt’s exploration of photography as a tool for great self-connection and embodiment, Cesar Dezfuli’s view of migration through a multi-year lens and Heba Khamis’ exploration of trauma-informed photography practices to explore collective healing. 

As part of CatchLight’s commitment to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the visual storytelling field, CatchLight is looking to support three innovative leaders who work to help grow and further the profession. CatchLight invests in impact — both on the visual storytelling field overall and the social issues our Fellows address. 

In 2019, CatchLight initiated the “CatchLight Impact Fund” as a new streamlined process for current and past fellows to propose collaborations with CatchLight to produce impact-driven engagement activities such as workshops, exhibitions and community activations in connection to their work. 

See examples of our Fellows’ impact here. You can follow the arch of a fellowship by watching Brian L. Frank’s fellowship journey here and read more about Aida Muluneh’s impact here.

The CatchLight Fellowship Applications can be submitted here. The three selected Fellows will be announced in April 2021. Fellowship jury to be announced soon.

ELEMENTS OF THE PROGRAM: 

Financial Grant: a $30,000 award will be distributed throughout the fellowship year to support the development of the Fellow and project. 

Personal Development and Network Building: A Fellow will have personal and professional development opportunities, impact strategy, and networking support from CatchLight staff and our extended network of partners. You will join a community of like-minded Fellows and industry professionals and have exposure to opportunities within the CatchLight network such as mentorship roles, education activities, and speaking engagements. 

Participation: Fellows will be in attendance at the annual series of events in the spring and fall, including an onboarding workshop, a celebration and speaking engagement designed to promote the Fellowship project, provide live community engagement and raise awareness for the relevant social issues. As we monitor the stages of re-opening in California our events will be a combination of virtual and in-person convenings. Throughout the Fellowship year Fellows attend regular virtual check-ins to stay in communication with CatchLight and the Fellow community and will serve as an opportunity to share your process and methodology with our audience.