Runway: Issue 49: Bloom
Applications now closed
Guest Edited by Justine Youssef.
Applications are now closed. Issue forthcoming (August).
Issue 49: Bloom
Guest Edited by Justine Youssef
Key Dates
April 4 2025: Proposals open
April 25 2025: Proposals close 11.59pm AEST
w/c 1 May June 2025: Applicants notified
May - June 2025: Development period
August 2025: Issue 49: Bloom launch
Applications close Friday 25 April, 11.59pm AEST
About the theme
In a world shaped by enduring systems of crisis and harm, Bloom emerges as a moment of repair. Runway Journal invites contributions that invoke alchemy—exploring how we can sustain one another in the face of precarity.
How do we cultivate steadfastness while continuing to resist or rebuild amid relentless devastation? How do we nurture interdependence when dominant narratives enforce separation? What nourishes you enough to persist?
We seek submissions across all mediums—visual art, film, photography, poetry, essays, multimedia, sound, and experimental practices—that engage with personal and collective acts of repair, reimagining this as a radical reconfiguration of our time.
About the Guest Editor
Justine Youssef’s practice is informed by ethnobotany, and guided by worldbuilding processes. Her exhibition Somewhat Eternal toured at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (2024), the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2024), and UTS Gallery, Sydney (2023), following earlier work at the Hawai’i Triennial, O’ahu (2022). Justine lives and works on Dharug Country in Sydney, Australia, where First Nations sovereignty was never ceded.
About Runway Journal
Runway Journal is a free, open-access digital publication that cultivates critical, bold and experimental practice. We commission artistic and written works that respond to current ideas in Australian and international contemporary art. Runway is powered by a dedicated team of voluntary artists and arts workers based across Australia.
FAQs
What fees & timeframe do you receive to develop works for the issue?
Contributors will be supported to produce new works over a 6-8 week period by Runway Journal’s editorial and digital team members. Please consider this timeframe in relation to the scope of your proposed work. Each contributor will be paid $600 AUD plus superannuation for their commissioned work.
We encourage you to peruse past issues for ideas. As Runway Journal aims to support a variety of practitioners and new voices, applicants who have not been commissioned by Runway Journal in the past year will be favoured.
What is the selection criteria?
When evaluating each proposal, the selection committee will consider the following:
– To what extent does the proposal respond to the theme?
– Is the proposed work critical; timely, responsive, research-based or relevant?
– Does the proposed work experiment with form? Is it brave, does it challenge the dominant narrative?
– How does this proposal serve to develop skills and help to innovate the applicant’s practice?
What support does Runway Journal offer?
Runway Journal’s board members endeavour to offer support and share knowledge so that the work delivered develops a line of enquiry in your personal practice while remaining connected to the overarching theme of Bloom.
We offer editorial support across fiction, critical essays and poetry. We can provide feedback across digital artworks and will work with you to create new ways to present work on our online platform. We do not see this relationship as a hierarchical one, and acknowledge that we will also learn from you in the process of developing your work.
What applicants are we looking for?
We are looking for bold and innovative submissions, such as visual art, film, photography, poetry, essays, multimedia, sound, and experimental practices, that speak to the theme of Bloom.