As a part of our continued objective to support the creative community in Lisbon, we launched a project to give free physical studio space to digital artists from low-income backgrounds. This proposal is an application for funding support to onboard the artists into the world of NFT’s and the NEAR network.

This project will build on our progress into the crypto art sphere after we recently co-founded chain based collective Art Progression Now (with Mintbase, Keyko and others) and hosted the Rare Effect Vol1 exhibition. The outcome of the project being that each artist will create a series of NFT’s on the NEAR network and the Mintbase platform. These will be eligible for selection in upcoming Art Progression Now exhibitions and event series.

 ‘Planting A.I.R’ (artist in residence) will go through a 3-week open call phase in which we will appeal to our target audience of digital artists who did not have easily available access to learning materials during their education. The open call will request information on past work, educational background, artistic field, portfolio, project proposal, detailed project schedule, CV and motivational letter.

During the residency, each artist will document and publish their journey using this online blog (medium of their choice), the blog will be made available to the rest of the NEAR community so other creatives can benefit from the lessons learnt over the process and be included in the report of the project.