Network funding granted to a great variety of new projects

A statue overlooking a big city below.

Network funding has now been distributed for first application round of 2021. Nordic Culture Point received a total of 51 applications, of which 13 were for the long-term network funding and 38 for the short-term network funding. A total amount of 648 562 € was granted to 5 long-term projects and 13 short-term projects.

The Expert Group that started their three-year mandate this year commented on their round as follows:

“We strongly acknowledge the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Nordic and Baltic context. At lot of effort is needed on the local, regional, national and international level to support the overall recovery of the cultural and creative sector. However, such a recovery will take place in the borderlands between the physical and the digital interface. Culture exchange in the Nordic and Baltic has a new horizon to discover!

Another growing and concerning horizon is climate change and the inclusion of the rural in the Nordic and Baltic context. How can culture networking contribute to a sustainable future without being too instrumentalized? And how can culture from and in the rural be more represented and supported in order to secure a strong inclusion? In order to do so, we as Experts need to take into strong consideration the issue of demographic and cultural infrastructure in the whole region, as well as the different and increasingly intertwining historical contexts. This of course is not an easy task, however it is important that we operate at a new and different scale when navigating the current and upcoming cultural landscape in the Nordic and Baltic context.”

Overall, the Expert Group was pleased to see a great variety of different kinds of applications and the granted projects represent a good spread of different culture fields. Nordic network for rethinking art museums of the future that was granted long-term funding is one good example of a process sparked by the current situation. The project will focus on rethinking from several perspectives why museums are needed. Some granted projects, such as Baltic Circus Grass-root Network, focus on developing a specific aspect within a specific art field. Other projects, however, approach networking from a thematic perspective and entail a strong cross-disciplinary collaboration between different fields. Good example of this kind of approach is the Forest School Network which is a development network bringing together artists and institutions to work towards the realisation of a new cross-disciplinary, peer-led professional development space. The network has an ambition to become a pan-Nordic/Baltic cultural project that achieves long-term exchange, dialogue and activities focused upon ecological issues, in this case focused upon forests, across art forms.  Another particularly highlighted projects by the Expert Group was the Krabstad Network. Krabstadt is a transmedia project that combines elements from popular culture, visual and live arts, and pedagogy in order to deal with Nordic history and culture.

See all granted projects here.

 

Network funding enables periods for cooperation, exchange of ideas and knowledge between professional artists and cultural workers in the Nordic region and/or the Baltic countries. The funding is a part of The Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture, which strengthens artistic and cultural cooperation in the Nordic region and the Baltic states.

The next application round for the Short-term network funding opens on 20 August 2021. Long-term network funding has only one application round per year and the next round will be arranged in the spring 2022.