Underbelly Fund for Underground Culture

Funding the photographers, filmmakers, zine makers, and organisers documenting and building DIY and underground scenes from the inside.

Underground culture is made by people with almost no resources, and it disappears just as fast. A venue closes, a band splits, a collective moves on, a generation gets older, and years of a scene's history go with them. The Underbelly Fund for Underground Culture backs the people best placed to change that: the photographers, filmmakers, zine makers, musicians, archivists, and organisers who are already inside the DIY and underground scenes they document. Born in the punk scenes of Soweto and grown through communities in Kenya, the UK, and Europe, the fund prioritises work that traditional art institutions will not fund and that strengthens a scene while recording it. Every funded project is documented into a shared online archive, so a show in a Johannesburg backyard or a zine run in Nairobi has a permanent home for the people who could not be there. Punk is where it starts. Grassroots culture everywhere is the point.

Eligibility

We welcome independent artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, zine makers, small publishers, archivists, and community organisers working from inside underground and DIY scenes anywhere in the world, with a special home for scenes across Africa.
To qualify for this fund, projects must meet the following eligibility requirements:
- From the Inside: Genuinely connected to an underground or DIY community and led by people actively participating in it or working closely with it.
- Document or Build the Scene: Photography, film, zines, independent publishing, events, recordings, or other grassroots cultural production that documents and strengthens underground culture.
- Institutions Will Not Fund It: Priority to work that would struggle to get funding from traditional art institutions.
- Original and Connected: The work shows originality and meaningful community connection, not a rebrand of someone else's scene.
- Into the Archive: Every funded project is documented and added to the shared Underbelly archive website so it lives on for people who could not be there.
- Respectful, Not Extractive: Subjects are collaborators, not content. No exploitative work.