Call for MADE Encounters
Call for MADE Encounters
Preparing Your Project Proposal
What could it become if it collided with someone else's?
MADE — Multi- and Interdisciplinary Arts Discovery and Engagement — is a student-driven festival for bold ideas, creative experiments, unexpected collaborations, and work that brings people together. Undergraduate and graduate students across Ohio State are invited to propose performances, exhibitions, installations, screenings, digital or interactive experiences, readings, workshops, conversations, participatory events, interdisciplinary experiments — or something we haven’t imagined yet.
START WITH THE IDEA — THEN THINK BEYOND YOUR DISCIPLINE
What do we want to make, investigate, share, test, or make possible — and who else might need to be part of making it?
MADE encourages you to think interdisciplinarily and collaboratively from the beginning. Rather than imagining a project that one person realizes alone, consider what might happen when different artists, makers, researchers, designers, thinkers, or disciplines come together around an idea.
Your team does not need to be complete when you apply. You may already have collaborators, or your proposal may identify the kinds of people, skills, disciplines, or perspectives you hope to bring together. MADE can help selected projects make those connections.
HELP US UNDERSTAND YOUR PROJECT
• THE IDEA: What are you proposing? What will audiences or participants encounter?
• THE WHY: What question, curiosity, experience, challenge, or possibility is driving the project?
• THE TEAM: Who is already involved — and what other disciplines, skills, perspectives, or collaborators could help realize the idea?
• THE EXCHANGE: What becomes possible because these different practices or perspectives are coming together?
• THE EXPERIENCE: What might someone see, hear, feel, do, discover, or think about through the project?
• THE NEEDS: What would help you realize it — space, equipment, technology, materials, mentorship, performers, collaborators, or production support?
WHAT MAKES A PROJECT “MADE”?
There is no single MADE aesthetic. We are not looking for one kind of art, one discipline, or only polished, finished work.
| DISCOVERY — Curiosity, experimentation, research, risk-taking, or trying something new. | COLLABORATION — Multiple people, disciplines, practices, skills, or perspectives in meaningful creative exchange. |
| ENGAGEMENT — A meaningful encounter with audiences, participants, communities, or public space. | DISTINCTIVE VOICE — A compelling point of view, question, curiosity, or creative impulse. |
| POSSIBILITY — An idea that can grow through MADE’s resources, mentorship, collaboration, and production support. | INTERDISCIPLINARY THINKING — A project shaped by what different ways of making and thinking contribute to one another. |
YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE EVERYTHING FIGURED OUT
MADE supports projects in development, not simply work that is already finished. Your proposal should be specific enough for us to understand what you want to do, but you are not expected to arrive with every artistic, collaborative, or logistical question solved.
Think ambitiously. If your idea requires collaborators you don’t yet know, technology you haven’t used, a space you don’t know how to access, or expertise outside your field, tell us. Part of MADE is helping promising ideas find the people and resources they need.
BEFORE YOU SUBMIT, ASK:
✓ Can someone outside my discipline understand what we are proposing?
✓ Have we explained why this project matters — not only what it is?
✓ Who is already on our team, and whose perspective, expertise, or creative practice might be missing?
✓ Does the collaboration actually shape the project rather than simply add people to it?
✓ Have we allowed ourselves to imagine something we could not accomplish in quite the same way alone?