Sophia Harari
Curator and poet Sophia Harari on how to land funding and fellowships
When thinking about your creative journey, the question on your mind shouldn’t be ‘What job do I want?’, but 'How do I feel about what I do?’, says Sophia Harari, multi-talented poet, performance artist and Curatorial Research Fellow at art gallery The Whitworth in Manchester. Continual reflection on your skills and your passions is an important part of your creative development. With several artist grants, residencies and fellowships under her belt, Sophia shares concrete places to get applying – and how to make your application sing.
What I do
My creative practice
I’m a curatorial researcher, poet and performance artist. I’m currently researching the ABC Wax Textiles Archive at the Whitworth Art Gallery to understand how the collection can exist as an accessible resource that faithfully reflects its shared histories.
I think in poems and write most days; this sometimes emerges as lines of thought, songs, sonnets or reflections on the sensuality of sound.
Influences and inspiration
Language and sound are at the centre of all my practices; the way that a story, a world, a reality can be held through voice and sound.
Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged, D’Angelo's Voodoo, Betty Wright Live, Audre Lorde reading Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, the writings of Stuart Hall on dialectics, Nala Sinephro's Space 1.8 – these all sit on the axis of pleasure and education. Through these artists and philosophers, a reality is constructed dependent on emotional and spiritual engagement.
My training
I studied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics at The University of Brighton, specialising in race and resistance. The most useful skills were comprehension and articulating learnings in debate and conversation. My education embedded in me a desire to listen, understand and build new paths of knowledge. This feels like a skill essential to curation, as well as the creative industries more broadly. It’s important to take time and care to understand an artist, collection or audience, and to build from a foundation of curiosity and research.
Favourite recent project
As part of the Freize Emerging Curators Fellowship, I was invited to activate my research at No 9 Cork Street. The event ‘Our Practice: Archive, Legacy and Contemporary Art’ was an opportunity to bring together artists, curators and cultural practitioners from the diaspora re-imagining archive as a public conversation. The practices and research of the speakers ranged from speculative worldbuilding to alternative pathways to memory, embodied archives and the development of decolonial methodologies.
A day in the life
Every day is different. My fellowship at the Whitworth is part-time, but when I’m in the office it's usually for meetings or to be with the collection. Some days I’m measuring fabric or facilitating study sessions with researchers or artists; other days I’m working with colleagues on developing accessioning or preparing items for loan to other galleries. In between, I read and write, draft emails, wander around the exhibitions and eavesdrop on visitors' conversations. I slowly add ideas to Word documents and look for interesting artists and possible funding.
When I’m not working at the Whitworth, the days are varied: stretching, scrolling, writing, performing, preparing sets, recording mixes, cooking, reading, rehearsing and planning.
“To learn in community what art means and to build space for it out of nothing, without red tape or ulterior motive, carved my pathway to curation.”
How I got here
Starting my creative journey
After graduating, I had clarity on my interests but not where they might take me. It wasn’t until moving to Bristol and being selected for an Artist Residency as a poet that I began to see where my creativity and career could intersect. Being supported to create original work, I began to understand the significance of artistic activation.
At a similar time, I became part of Shiiku – a DIY artist collective that develops exhibitions in uninhabited public spaces. This non-hierarchical, non-institutional collection of friends, mostly women, who just DID, taught me more than I can express. To learn in community what art means and to build space for it out of nothing, without red tape or ulterior motive, carved my pathway to curation.
With this trust in my abilities, I applied for the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursary; my placement was at the music charity and venue Bristol Beacon as a Creative Assistant. I began constructing events where music became an experience beyond sound.
Landing my first few jobs, clients and/or commissions
All of my successful jobs and opportunities have been from applications that I’ve written in earnest, in my own voice. Finding my voice and trusting my perspective has enabled me to apply with the knowledge that my offer as a practitioner is valuable. That’s not to say that I’ve never put my all into an application and been unsuccessful, but that I’ve never achieved what I want without trying hard. When unsuccessful, feedback always serves as a resource for the next goal.
When I’ve been approached for work, which only really happens in relation to performance and workshop facilitation, it’s because at some point earlier in my journey I was vulnerable.
Biggest challenges along the way
My biggest challenge by far is financial security. In my pursuit of passion, compromises have been made. There have been schemes for entry-level opportunities, bursary placements, fellowships, community development. In my decade in the creative industry, I have been on Universal Credit, been full-time, been part-time, been freelance, lived alone, lived at my mum's, lived in shared houses, been in my overdraft, had savings, emptied out those same savings, been paid to make work, and self-funded projects. None of these states have been secure, but managing the inconsistency of creative work has been a lesson in itself. Persevering through is a testament to the love for what I do.
“In my decade in the creative industry, I have been on Universal Credit, been full-time, been part-time, been freelance, been in my overdraft, had savings, emptied out those same savings.”
My social media and self-promotion vibe is…
Do what feels possible for you. If you can post daily, stay in touch with your community, comment to maintain engagement and strategically drip-feed your projects online without causing harm to your health, then you should.
If the impact of holding all these worlds in your mind is uncomfortable (like it is for me) or if algorithmic traps impact time for your art and life, then find what makes sense for you. This could be scheduled social media time, one post a week, or notebooks of DMs to be typed when you feel able to traverse the digital world.
Three things I've found useful in my career:
- Google Scholar is one of the greatest gifts of the internet. Although the paywall can be a barrier, even an abstract introduction to an essay can open up my thinking and my world. It’s a great way to enrich your understanding of a topic, especially when you enter with an open mind.
- On Discourse and the Curatorial by Mick Wilson, part of the ‘On the Curatorial’ series. This book has been a journey into understanding curation as a pathway to knowledge.
- Creative Career Job and Opportunity boards such as ArtsJobs, GuardianJobs (Arts and Heritage), Run the Check and a-n (well worth the membership). These resources not only help you navigate work, but can act as inspiration for the type of roles that exist in the industry.
Courses, programmes, initiatives, access schemes or job boards I've found helpful
- Run the Check is a great resource for diverse jobs in the arts: its updated regularly and is a nationwide database (not London-centric).
- Frieze’s Emerging Curators Fellowship. This was the fellowship I received in 2024–25 and has firmly placed me in an industry I had been tentatively teetering on before.
- Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice. Applying for DYCP can be an arduous process, but researching how to write an application, how to talk about your practice, and, if successful, the time are invaluable.
My greatest learnings when it comes to making money and supporting myself as a creative:
Ultimately you must feed yourself, house yourself, clothe yourself and live a life that allows you to create. Survival is non-negotiable, and usually as a creative person, creating is essential to our survival.
This doesn’t have to translate to stacked CVs, professional accolades and high-profile collaborations. It could look like working as a KP four days a week and making music with your friends when you have the time, soundtracking your Instagram mutuals' short film over a summer. It could look like working 3.5 days a week at the Whitworth as a research fellow and DJing clubs in Manchester every few weeks, facilitating movement and sound workshops every few months and building live ambient spoken word sets in the evenings.
Your journey is your own, your intentions are your own. How you get there and how ‘there’ is sustained is a choice, not an eventuality.
“Most creative jobs are underpaid and under-supported, so be sure you believe in what you are doing and that you are confident in how your practice is being developed.”
My advice
My most useful career tips
For me, what has been essential is not, ‘What job do I want?’, but 'How do I feel about what I do?’. How do I either pivot to something I feel more passionately about or maintain this momentum for the thing that fires my soul? Most creative jobs are underpaid and under-supported, so be sure you believe in what you are doing and that you are confident in how your practice is being developed.
If you don’t feel like you’re getting this in a role, find ways outside to become the creative practitioner you know you are. Use these learnings to move forward in your career; every experience is experience.
Event production at Bristol Beacon
What I'd say to someone looking to get into a similar role
Research is the most important thing. Look through job descriptions of aligned roles, see what jobs work for your skills and where you need to develop further. For those development intentions, think about how you can utilise current projects, collaborations, volunteering, education and creativity to learn beyond what you currently know.
For me, it’s been important to write reflections on all of my creative endeavours through journaling, mind mapping and power-pointing. Learning from what you’ve done will help you better contextualise your experience for upcoming applications.