Call For Applications: Studio Monkey Shoulder Returns With A £10,000 Grant To Support Music Scenes

Last Year, the Scottish whiskey brand Studio Monkey joined hands with prominent selector Gilles Peterson (and Thristian Richards) co-founded online radio Worldwide.fm to launch Studio Monkey Shoulder, an initiative to nurture grassroots scenes across the world. As part of that, the initiative is offering £10,000 (over 11 lakh in INR) each towards 5 original projects around the world that connect communities to create and/or discover music alongside highlighting them on platforms like Worldwide.fm.

In its previous inaugural year, the grant benefitted the likes of India's BFR Soundsystem, which is helmed by Taru Dalmia aka Delhi Sultanate. Taru utilised the grant to revive Assam's The BiG BANG! Festival Of Love.

"The grant allowed us to kind of take things up a notch and be a bit more audacious," says Taru, who had previously co-organised the festival in Assam's Haflong but took it last year to Nanadisa, a tribal village that is more than 500 year old and offers a window into an earlier form of self-sufficient way of living. "The idea was to celebrate that village and call a lot of musicians there and organise this festival and craft everything from local bamboo. The grant enabled us to do this: to bring a music festival to this place and have also really high production quality for everything."

Other recipients utilised the grant to release compilations from the communities, repress records from its legends and start new radio shows.

Inviting more of such ideas in its second year, Studio Monkey Shoulder is opening its applications till June 1, 2025.

To apply and for more information, head here. Check out the highlights video below to find out more about the grant recipients from 2024.

Image: Delhi Sultanate