Environmental Bursary

This bursary is now closed until 2020. The information below is for reference only.
The Royal Photographic Society in partnership with The Photographic Angle is offering a 1-year bursary to support a photographic project that will promote environmental awareness. Applications are invited from anyone living or studying in the United Kingdom with a talent for taking photographs and an interest in the environmental concerns that we face today.

The bursary will provide £3000 to assist with travel expenses, photographic equipment and other project-related costs. We are looking for a creative interpretation of the subject as well as documentary and editorial photography. In addition to the funding you will also be able to claim your portfolio printed by Metro Imaging.

The closing date will be the end of June 2020. We will notify the successful applicants by early August 2020.

Details on how to apply will be published in the new year - meanwhile if you would like to be informed as soon as this information is available please email liz@rps.org

Recipient 2019/20

The Environmental bursary will enable Catherine Hyland to travel to the Himalayas in order to make a new photographic series and a short film about the water crisis there and how an ingenious idea to build artificial glaciers at lower altitudes using pipes, gravity and night temperatures could transform an arid landscape into an oasis.

Over 30's Recipient 2017/18

Harry Borden was the over-30 bursary recipient. Harry collaborated with the writer Mireille Thornton, to produce Four Hugs Wide and Into the Trees. The work explores our relationship with the arboreal through stories of people who love, live and work with trees and woodland across Great Britain. The project considers a world where people acknowledge our species as part of a larger ecosystem and live their lives accordingly.

Under 30's Recipient 2017/18

Sandra Angers-Blondin, the under 30 recipient, explored, a remote island in the Canadian Arctic. A haven for whales, seals, muskoxen, snowy owls, and delicate tundra flowers it is changing rapidly as the ground thaws, sending whole chunks of coastline into the sea.

Not only is the ground eroding, but the cultural heritage, too, is affected. Historical buildings, graves, and archaeological artefacts – the legacy of hundreds of years of Inuvialuit people living off the land, and of a whaling and trading – are threatened by erosion and flooding. Today, Qikiqtaruk, is a territorial park and a living laboratory for climate change research.