Call for entries from artists worldwide working on themes of art and environment for the COAL Prize 2017. In seven years, the COAL Prize became an international meeting place for artists who take up the main universal issue of our time: ecology.

The prize-winner receives an award of € 5,000 and is invited for a residency including an additional aid in production at Domaine de Belval (Ardennes – France) by the François Sommer Foundation.

Applicants will be judged on the following criteria: artistic value, relevance (understanding of the issues), originality (the ability to introduce new approaches, themes, and points of view), pedagogy (ability to get a message across and raise awareness), social and participative approaches (engagement, testimony, efficiency, societal dynamics), ecodesign and feasibility.

The COAL Prize supports art projects in progress. Its endowment is not intended to cover all production costs of the project and should be considered as an aid to its development.

The COAL Prize is open to artists from all over the world who deploy their creativity to devise and experiment with solutions and bear witness to the transformation of territories, lifestyles, organizations, and means of production, while making a contribution to the process themselves. Together they are participating in building a new collective narrative, a new world of imagination, an evolving shared heritage, a positive framework that is optimistic and essential for everyone to find the motivation to implement the necessary changes towards a more sustainable world.

The COAL Prize, created in 2010 by the COAL Art and Ecology non profit organisation, has become a vehicle of identification, promotion and diffusion of these artists, to the general public, professionals of culture and ecology and political figures. Every year the COAL Prize highlights ten projects by artists working on environmental issues in the field of visual arts. They are selected through an international call for projects. One of them is awarded the COAL Prize by a jury of personalities from the domains of art and ecology. In addition, all the applications considered by COAL and the selection committee make it possible to make known artists and projects that can be solicited or promoted according to the other opportunities and actions carried out by the association.

Application deadline: 20 July 2017 at midnight.

Image credit : Angelika Markul, photograph taken during the shooting of Tierra Del Fuego, El Calafate, Argentina. Winner of the COAL Prize 2016.