Last November, British Council Ukraine launched the first Envision Sound Composer Grants scheme. It is aimed at providing an opportunity for emerging composers to realise a new original score supplied by our Envision Sound partners in Ukraine (Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival, Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre) so we can continue to create stronger links between Ukraine and the UK during the challenges posed by the pandemic. After an overwhelming response of many high-quality applications, we are really pleased to announce the 3 recipients of the Envision Sound Composer Grants!
The three recipients are:
Chloe Knibbs. Chloe will be creating a new score to the short animation ‘Today’, directed by Julia Shalimova. She will be mentored by Enrica Sciandrone.
Chloe Knibbs is a composer exploring storytelling, theatricality and sidelined voices with a particular emphasis on feminist perspectives. Included in the British Music Collection, her work includes compositions for opera and music theatre, orchestra, chamber music, art song and choir. Her music has been featured on BBC Radio 3 and performed by a number of ensembles including the Riot Ensemble, Birmingham Opera Company and Project Instrumental. Chloe's work has also received support from PRS Women Make Music Scheme and Jerwood Arts.
Ela Orleans. Ela is writing score for ‘The Beilis Affair’, directed by Nikolay Breshko-Breshkovsky, kindly provided by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre film archive. Neil Brand will be mentoring Ela over the next few months.
Ela Orleans is an electronic sound and visual artist, performer, academic and composer based in London. Her work fuses elegant, noir-ish laments, lush and atmospheric fractured narratives with influences ranging from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to the Éthiopiques series and Bernard Herrmann film scores. Since her solo debut Low Sun/High Moon in 2008, Orleans has received international critical acclaim for her growing catalogue of work.
Subsequently, Orleans has toured across the UK, Europe, USA and Canada, performing work at MoMA PS1, New York; MoCA, Massachusetts; The Venice Biennale and TATE Britain. She has worked on several albums, film soundtracks plus theatre and opera works. She has also completed a remix of work by new age sound pioneer, Laraaji for Warp and her album Circles Of Upper and Lower Hell was shortlisted for Scottish Album of the Year in 2017. Following the performance of her audiovisual composition "Night Voyager" based on NASA archives at Sonica Festival, Orleans joined the Cryptic Artists’ roster in 2020. She is a PhD candidate in Music at the University of Glasgow.
Jo Ranger. Jo will be composing new music for the documentary ‘I Am Michelle’, directed by Olena Siyatovska and will be mentored by Nainita Desai.
Jo Ranger is a classically trained musician and composer living in London. She is a member of the BFI Network x BAFTA film crew and currently on the Ivor’s Academy Youth Council and Media Committee. She has worked on a variety of projects such as short and feature films, production music, and artist albums. At the moment she is finishing off her debut EP of solo trombone music.
Additionally, she has recently founded Audio Artemis - the collective for women in sampling. The aim of the collective is to support and further the voices of women and gender minorities in the audio sampling world.
Jo loves to create lush and exciting orchestral, synth, and hybrid music - rich in melodies and harmonies - and draws on her extensive orchestral experience as a multi-instrumentalist and singer. Telling stories that tap into human drama, whether largely universal or highly specific, comes naturally to Jo. She’s driven to write music that helps us understand on a deep emotional level the world and people around us.
Film Directors
Yuliia Shalimova is a director, designer and illustrator, born in Kyiv, Ukraine. She studied graphic design at the Kyiv State Institute of Decorative Art and Design named after M. Boychuk. For almost 10 years, Yuliia worked in printing as a graphic designer. Since 2010, she has been working with different publishers as an illustrator. During this time , nine boos featuring her illustrations have been published.
In 2018, Yuliia graduated from the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary University for Theatre, Cinema and Television where she studied Animation Direction (Yevhen Syvokon’s workshop). She is the director of animated short films “Travels” (2017, term project), “Romeo and Juliet” (2018, graduate project), animated music video for the song “Na Volyu” (“На волю”) by the ethnic-jazz band GANNA (2020) that received awards in Ukraine and abroad. Yuliia Shalimova is also a nominee for the Dzyga National Film Award in the Animation category (Ukraine, 2019) and winner of the international Shakespeare Shorts 2020 competition (Great Britain, 2020).
Olena Siyatovska is an artist and an emerging director. She was born in Czech Republic. She grew up in Dnipro, studied at the National University of Oles Honchar (Ukraine) and University of Fine Arts in Poznan (Poland), lives and works in Kyiv. Siyatovska focuses on social relations, human rights, and identity in the digital dimension. She received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of Poland “Gaude Polonia” in 2019 and has participated in exhibitions and residencies in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany. “I Am Michelle” is the directing debut of Siyatovska.