Set up in response to the coronavirus crisis, the Culture of Solidarity Fund supports innovative cultural projects that cross national borders, professional sectors and artistic disciplines and that are eager to find collaborative solutions to systemic problems that limit the prospects of their communities in the wake of the pandemic.
This latest call focuses on communities in parts of Europe which are often at the peripheries of public interest and that contend with the coronavirus crisis within a context of chronic economic decline brought on by deindustrialisation, rural depopulation, and/or changing economic and political forces. And while these regions are not alone in experiencing the increasingly harmful cascade of effects issuing from environmental degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss, they may believe they lack the necessary resources to mitigate them.
While acknowledging its historically specific position, Eastern Germany is a prime example of a region that has proven its resilience, flexibility and capacity to innovate in the face of radically transformative challenges, accumulating a wealth of practical experience and skills that would benefit all Europeans at this critical moment, but in particular those regions similarly affected by systemic transformations.
This call is open to cultural organisations as well as organisations from other fields of work and public institutions that are based and/or active in Eastern Germany or in European regions similarly affected by deindustrialisation, population decline, social dissolution, failing public infrastructure, and ecological crises.
It supports short- or longer-term collaborative actions that address, through cultural work, one or more challenges relating to socio-economic transformation and post-pandemic questions. ECF are looking for project proposals in particular that:
- Act locally in one region but in close collaboration and trans-national solidarity with local initiatives in similarly challenged regions across Europe.
- Develop local future-oriented cultural solutions to shared systemic challenges.
- Align with new interregional models of knowledge and practice exchange that aspire to progressive socio-cultural changes in Europe.
Grants are available in two amounts subject to the number of partners:
- €40,000 – two partners.
- €60,000 – three partners or more.
The grant term will be up to 12 months, starting on 1 November 2021 and ending on 31 October 2022. Project activities may take place no earlier than the starting date and no later than 31 October 2022.
