The first bottom-up, demand-driven mobility scheme for artists funded by the EU has proven to be a big success, the project report finds.
The European Commission has published its report “Artists Abroad: i-Portunus the EU’s First Mobility Scheme for Culture”. This project proved to be a success both in terms of the number of applicants and the feedback from participants.
With a budget of €1 million, i-Portunus, a pilot project under the Creative Europe programme, funded 337 individuals in the performing and visual arts to go abroad and make their career more international, improve their skills and broaden their networks.
Find the report online
Background:
In May 2018, the European Commission published its “New European Agenda for Culture” which sets out objectives for cooperation at EU level and proposes 25 priority actions. One of these is to encourage “the mobility of professionals in the cultural and creative sectors”. i-Portunus was a short-term pilot project, selected and funded by Creative Europe, the EU programme which supports the European culture and audiovisual sectors.
To implement this initiative, a call for tenders was published in 2018. The successful bidder was a consortium consisting of the Goethe-Institut (Germany), Institut francais (France), Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania) and Izolyatsia (Ukraine). The pilot project ran from January 2019 to February 2020.
On the Move was contracted by the consortium to produce an operational study on the mobility funding patterns, levels of demands, needs and related offers, published online in April 2020.
Follow-ups:
This mobility scheme will be incorporated into the new Creative Europe programme (2021-2027) with increased funding.
Taking into consideration the reality of the restrictions due to the coronavirus outbreak, a blended mobility experience may be appropriate and the exact modalities will be defined before the next call is launched