Apply to Leonardo Imagination Fellowship 2023

Leonardo and the Center for Science and the Imagination are proud to announce our second Imagination Fellowship, starting in August 2023. In this virtual, global program, fellows will develop experimental media projects exploring diverse aspects of Planetary Health Futures, including but not limited to issues of climate, human well-being, interspecies relationships, democracy, emerging social structures, and safeguarding the Earth’s habitability for humans and other life forms. Applications are due on June 2, 2023 at 11:59pm MST.

Fellows will reflect on how their projects support, align with and add new complexity and nuance to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They should also substantively engage with the notion of experimental media, charting new territory in areas like expanded reality, immersive storytelling, worldbuilding, and more. Projects should embrace global perspectives and invite global participation, and demonstrate commitment to justice and equity.

Each fellow will produce a discrete media artifact, and will be supported in collaborative, cross-disciplinary experimentation with practice and process throughout the fellowship period. Examples of outputs or deliverables include, but are not limited to experimental publishing projects, from books and novellas to zines and networked texts; expanded reality projects, from virtual and augmented reality to mixed reality; games and interactive experiences; films and video installations; sonic environments and acoustic experiences.

We invite fellowship applications focusing on a range of themes. Each fellow will connect their work with one of the following themes at Leonardo-ASU or the Center for Science and the Imagination. In the first phase of their fellowship the fellows will identify a specific existing CSI or Leonardo project to focus on, building on its networks, communities, and creative outputs. Some exemplar projects are listed for each theme below.
 

ACCESS

• Disability Innovation, connecting with the CripTech Incubator
• Indigenous Lands and Communities, connecting with Cosmovisión

PLANETARY FUTURES

• Global Perspectives on Futures, connecting with Our Future Life
• Space Futures and Interplanetary Exploration, connecting with Arizona Space Futures*
• Climate Futures, connecting with the Climate Imagination Fellowship Program

LEARNING FUTURES BRAIN/MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS

• Futures of Learning and Education, connecting with the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project*
• Imagination, Cognition, and Consciousness, connecting with Applied Imagination Project
• Speculative Fiction for Institutional Transformation, connecting with the Applied Sci-Fi Project

*While several of these existing projects are rooted in Arizona, we welcome global connections, extensions, and expansions in fellowship projects that connect to these regional efforts.
 

Fellowship Details

• The Imagination Fellowship Program will offer up to 3 virtual fellowships, beginning in August 2023, and running through April 2024.
• Fellows will receive $6,000 per fellow for the period of 9 months. There is no separate production budget. Fellows are free to use their stipend to support production needs.
• Applications are due Friday, June 2, by 11:59 pm Arizona time (UTC-7)

For further questions, please reach out to imagination@asu.edu.