Confession Sessions Fund for Underground Music Rituals

Supporting underground DJs, producers, VJs, and performance artists who transform unconventional spaces into community-driven, high-concept rituals.

Confession Sessions fuels creators reclaiming the dancefloor from commercial gatekeeping. We support boundary-pushing music, visuals, and performance hosted in heritage or unconventional spaces, elevating grassroots talent with festival-grade production while centering community ritual, catharsis, and collective experience.

medium:music-performance

Eligibility

This Fund supports creators producing underground music events or performative experiences in unconventional or heritage spaces, emphasizing community ritual, world-class audiovisual production, fair pay, and accessibility. Projects must champion emerging talent excluded from commercial circuits and embody a people-over-profit ethos.
To qualify for this fund, projects must meet the following eligibility requirements:
- Non-Traditional Venues: Events must take place in unconventional, non-commercial spaces (e.g., heritage sites, converted churches, industrial sites, abandoned buildings, community-owned spaces).
- Production Quality: Proposals must demonstrate festival-grade sound and visual engineering, such as high-quality audio rigs, projection mapping, lighting design, or real-time visual systems.
- Fair Pay Policy: All contributors—DJs, producers, VJs, Resolume operators, lighting techs, performers, and staff—must be paid at or above Arts Council “Paying the Artist” standards. No “exposure-only” compensation models.
- Community & Ritual Focus: Events must prioritize community experience and artistic collaboration over promoter profit, emphasizing inclusion, accessibility, and cultural value.
- Creator Profile: Open to underground DJs, producers, VJs, visual engineers, lighting designers, performance artists, and event creators who have been excluded from commercial circuits or affected by local gatekeeping.
- Interactive or Immersive Element: Projects must integrate some form of communal expression—e.g., live visuals, participatory installations, or technologies like the Confession Booth—that transform audiences from spectators into co-creators.
- People Over Profit: Ticket prices must be capped to remain accessible while ensuring robust professional fees for performers and staff.
- Global Eligibility: Open to creators worldwide, though projects must embody the ethos of decentralizing music culture and uplifting overlooked local scenes.
- Respect for Space: Projects must include a plan for maintaining the integrity and safety of heritage or unconventional venues and collaborating respectfully with local communities.

Projects (35)

27 submitted · 7 funded · 1 curated

Project	Status	Raised
Gaia Sound Temple	funded	$5,056
subcult	funded	$145,111
ZuCity Japan	funded	$110
HOPE	funded	$20,814
Oasis of Rhythm: An Inward Journey Through Sound	funded	$1,770
International Artists Project	funded	$462
MusicaW3	funded	$52,007
Confession Sessions: The Resurrection Tour Ireland & UK	curated	$0
W8W Creative Hub	submitted	$86
Bro's Studio	submitted	$6,631
HERITAGE COLLECTION: Fashion, Music & Blockchain Show	submitted	$20,742
We're Loud Fest 2026	submitted	$47,579
Participatory Spatial Music Show	submitted	$54
GreenPill Uganda: Uganda's Regenerative Agriculture and web3 mission	submitted	$11
Voices of the Land	submitted	$19,991
The MOTHERLand Project	submitted	$503
Labour Union of Higherdimensional Shapeshifters	submitted	$360
Herman of Reichenau	submitted	$0
For Cool Kids	submitted	$26,182
Traveling Soundbath Temple	submitted	$0
Ladybug Music Festival - Power the Largest Free, Women-Led Festival in U.S.	submitted	$520
Akuya	submitted	$234
FEMSTAGE	submitted	$0
The Uncouth Coup (Debut music NFT album by @Coopdville2000)	submitted	$0
Ear of Dionysus: Listening as a Frontier Technology	submitted	$0
Hip-Hop Africa: Building Pan-African Hip-Hop Infrastructure	submitted	$111,237
Clandestino Jazz	submitted	$0
Tidal Festival	submitted	$0
Divasonic	submitted	$7,584
seks	submitted	$454
The International Artists Project Documentary	submitted	$563
Mystic Escape: Next Generation of Dance Music	submitted	$1,642
Vibe at Dusk	submitted	$13,575
Nu Phobia: Full-Body Listening Journeys	submitted	$39,631
GAME OF AKASH	submitted	$0