Culture of Solidarity Fund: Interregional edition

Regional transformation & European Culture of Solidarity post-Coronavirus

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 are eager to find collaborative solutions to systemic problems that limit the prospects of their communities thriving, in the wake of the pandemic.

This latest call focuses on communities in parts of Europe often at the peripheries of public interest that are contending with the Coronavirus crisis within a context of chronic economic decline brought on by deindustrialization, rural depopulation, and/ or changing economic and political forces in recent decades. 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. The Eastern German experience–its successes, failures, and challenges–could serve as their rallying point for culturally engaging with each other in a spirit of transnational solidarity and hands-on collaboration.

What are we looking for?

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 deindustrialization, 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 such as:

• How will young generations and marginalised communities recoup lost opportunities?
• How can citizens and communities in remote areas take advantage of accelerating digitalisation and labour market transformation?
• How can rising social polarisation, political radicalism and populist movements be stemmed?
• How can conventional media and digital platforms be engaged locally to better support communities?
• Are cultural revitalisation strategies and creative industries suitable transformative resources in communities affected by deindustrialization?
• How can sites of environmental destruction be turned into ecologically, culturally, and socially diverse landscapes that contribute to global climate justice while reinvigorating the quality of life of local
  populations?
• How can local traditions be integrated into innovative architecture, design, spatial planning and climate research projects (e.g. in the context of the New European Bauhaus Initiative of the EU)?
• What roles do questions of cultural mobility and the cultural transformation of space play in societies
  with ambitions to create more climate-neutral and biodiverse landscapes to live?

We 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.

What do we offer?

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.

The submission deadline for the call is Friday, 3 September, 13.00 CEST.