About
International Curators Forum (ICF) is a catalyst and leader for cultural transformation in the visual arts, advocating for and fostering an equitable, inclusive and accessible ecology that sustains and is sustained by the value of diversity.
Through high-quality professional development initiatives (including fellowships, mentorship, and residencies), as well as critically engaged public programmes and discursive outputs (such as exhibitions, commissions, events, workshops, digital projects and publications), ICF is transforming towards a better world for creative and cultural practitioners by resourcing them with the support, spaces and leadership they need.
Background
ICF was founded by artists and curators in 2007 to offer a programme of commissions, exhibitions, projects, publications and events that respond to the material conditions and cultural contexts impacting creative and cultural practitioners. For 18 years ICF has consistently demonstrated a commitment to building a community / forum for and publicly promoting the work of creative and cultural practitioners from underrepresented backgrounds. ICF has modelled strategic change by building responsive opportunities, models and spaces, and impacting the careers of more than 600 practitioners.
Our Work
ICF advocates for systemic change through an active and expansive engagement with ‘diaspora’ as a critical lens or framework through which we can address and shape more complex perceptions of identity, test and explore new curatorial models, and create space for artistic and discursive interventions into historical narratives and systems of representation. Across all of our work, we are committed to challenging the barriers to equality and inclusivity within our industry. We aim to transform what leadership looks like in the arts.
We do this by:
- Nurturing a new generation of leaders
- Creating tools and sharing knowledge
- Producing inspiring work for target audiences
- Building public appetite and will for complex work
These aims are supported by four forms of relational, synergetic activity:
- Public programming
- Professional development
- Discourse production and education
- Advocacy and systems change
We also never work in isolation – Everything we do is delivered through strategic partnerships with a range of organisations, including museums, galleries, collectives, charities and non-profit organisations, sector support and advocacy organisations, educational institutions, consultants and funders.
Our Mission
Through our responsive, innovative and affecting programmes, ICF supports and champions the work of creative and cultural practitioners from underrepresented backgrounds, with a particular focus on emerging artists and curators. We use the terms creative and cultural practitioners to acknowledge and encompass the expansive ways in which individuals work and practice in the creative industries and the cultural sector.
ICF’s programmes produce and present ambitious, dynamic art, which holds social relevance, for both target audiences and the widest possible public, and we invite practitioners invested in leading an inclusive and equitable arts industry to participate in a generative system of skills and knowledge transfer.
Based in London, ICF has conceived and produced projects with artists, curators and thinkers across the UK, Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East and Australia.
ICF is a registered charity (1189228) and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.
Find our more about our programmes here.
Read our Environmental Responsibility Statement here.