The National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) wishes to announce and congratulate successful applicants who responded to the 2023 Local Block Bursary Funding Call for the 2024 academic year. This announcement is for the call that opened on the 4^th of September 2023 and closed on the 6^th of September 2023.

The application adjudications process was performed by qualified industry experts in the Arts sector. The NAC Council and Management are pleased to inform the sector that a total of twelve (12) applications were successful, across the arts disciplines that were earmarked during this call for funding. The total budget available to fund the Local Block Bursary Funding applications was R2 680 705.00 and the budget was awarded as follows:

To ensure representativity across all provinces in the country, the NAC took the initiative of reaching out to institutions in the marginalised provinces alerting them to apply for funding whilst the call was still open. The communication was conveyed  to institutions in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State, Eastern Cape, and North West provinces respectively. Through this initiative, we have learned that some institutions do not offer arts-related curricula which affected the funding provincial spread. In addition to this initiative, the NAC Marketing and Communications team embarked on a media campaign to create awareness and encourage institutions to apply for the call.

As the NAC, we pride ourselves on administering such funding programmes and we believe that the funding of bursaries is an essential element for developing the arts to ensure excellence. Through this bursary funding programme, we ensure that South Africa has a sustainable pool of talented artists and leaders which falls within our mandate of developing the sector.

In conclusion, we wish to extend our profound gratitude to the sector institutions for positively responding to this call by submitting applications on behalf of the students who wish to pursue their careers in the arts. And we congratulate all applicants whose applications were successful.

A full list of all the successful applicants for the seven (7) disciplines is now available on the NAC website at www.nac.org.za.

 Ends. 

Enquiries:

General: info@nac.org,za

Media: media@nac.org.za

Issued by the National Arts Council of South Africa

Please click the link below to download the media statement in PDF format:

Media Statement – Local Institutional block bursaries final