Tawid Grant is aimed at supporting small-scale sound archive research and initiatives. The grant is open to individuals or organizations working on sound archive projects based in Southeast Asia.
Tawid Grant is funded from the KNAW Early Career Award endowed to Sonic Entanglements project leader, dr. meLê yamomo.
Two to three projects will be chosen in the first round of the application. Applicants can apply for a maximum of €500. Successful grantees/recipients are expected to implement and complete their project within six months of receiving the grant.
Congratulations to the 2025 awardees for their vital projects and for the generous futures of listening they help make possible.
Community Sound Archive of Yokiwa
In Yokiwa Village, Sentani (Papua), the clans Awoitauw, Fiobetauw, and Mimitauw sustain akhoykoy, a folklore tradition carrying ecological ethics, cosmological understandings, and teachings on land stewardship. Alyakha Art Center Foundation and Nafas Danau Sentani Arts Collective have worked with clan leaders and local youth to record Yokiwa’s soundscapes and oral narratives. These materials remain unorganized amid ecological pressure and the risk of losing oral knowledge.
The young generation of Yokiwa Obed Fiobetauw and Gloria Monim villages learn to do field recording in the customary forest area.
Ritual Archives of the River
Ritual Archives of the River: Recording and Reconnecting the Sonic Ecologies of Sasana Kayau in Katingan Awa is a collective sound archiving initiative in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Led by ethnomusicologist and sound artist Muhammad Rayhan Sudrajat, the project approaches Sasana Kayau, a ritual vocal form performed in Dayak Katingan gatherings, as relational knowledge: a living interface where song, speech, river, forest, and ancestral worlds co-produce meaning and care.
