Converse and Dazed & Confused are back for the fourth year in a row with the Emerging Artists Award, their sights set on discovering the best new artists in the UK. The aim is simple: to support burgeoning talent at the moment that it needs it most.

It has a strong track record in discovering new artists: last year’s winner, RCA graduate Samara Scott, has had a busy and successful 2013 with solo shows at Sunday Painter and Almanac Projects, 2011 winner Richard Parry has exhibited at Bloomberg SPACE and 2010 winner Peter Ainsworth has worked with rhizome.org. And it's not just the winner who benefits from the cash and the limelight – alongside Ainsworth in the 2010 shortlist were the now very successful Francesca Anfossi, Steve Bishop, Laura Buckley and Jess Flood-Paddock.

The judging panel has featured some of the UK's most established art-world figures over the years, from Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, The Times critic Nancy Durrant and Kirsty Ogg of the Whitechapel Gallery to gallerist Sadie Coles, artist Eva Rothschild and Dazed's very own Francesca Gavin. Applicants for the 2013 prize are vying to have their work seen by curators, gallerists, writers and a Turner Prize nominee.

The Award is open to unrepresented artists working in any medium, as long as they’re under 35, resident in the UK and not in education. The shortlisted artists will receive £1,000 each to display new works in a group show at a pop-up gallery space in Shoreditch, with the winner receiving an extra £5,000 at a prizegiving event at the Whitechapel Gallery.

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