Tag: artists

Athens – All the city’s a stage

Athens is using culture to boost the city’s recovery after corona. Already at the beginning of the lockdown, the municipality invited artists through an open call to suggest events for the special situation under the pandemic. More than 600 proposals from all cultural sectors – arts, music, theatre, performances, dancing, cinema, literature – were made and are forming a comprehensive programme now, including Culture@Home with live streamings, writers’ videos (“Stay Home with the Authors”) and live events under the corona restrictions. The city coordinates the activities and provides free support for streaming and publicity, and even the Athens City Hall was opened for smaller cultural events. You can find the full programme here

Contact: Dimitris Konstantopoulos

Bratislava – Overview of measures for culture

Bratislava quickly reacted to confinement with online broadcasts of theatre plays, concerts from windows and balconies, as well as cultural activities in hospitals. Read the full overview or Bratislava’s measures for culture here and more on the original article by Vlado Grežo and Pavol Demeš here (in Slovak)

Contact: Petra Dzurovcinova

Bologna – Your neighbourhood, a cultural centre

Copyright: city of Bologna

Bologna will organise affordable initiatives throughout the summer investing every courtyard and every square. Citizens will be able to meet and stay together respecting security measures. ‘Bologna Estate’ will have a wide offer of screenings, performances and concerts in addition to traditional museums and tourist attractions, and to bring culture in every corner of the city, each neighbourhood will turn into a culture venue hosting small theatre performances, mobile storytellers, monologues and much more. Read more here and here (in Italian)

Contact: Micaela Merli

Nantes – €1 million for culture

Nantes has set up an emergency fund of €1 million to support cultural structures and professionals. The fund focuses on supporting the most vulnerable and threatened cultural entities in Nantes. It wants to preserve the city’s cultural diversity and reinforce the economic impact of culture in times of crisis. Read more here (in French)

Contact: Nicolas Joffraud

Katowice – Culture Package

Artists and other cultural workers and organisations in Katowice, Poland, can get financial support by the city during the corona pandemic. Artists who have lost income as a result of the lockdown measures can apply for a grant. Cultural organisations renting municipal office spaces will be exempted from rent until it is possible to resume their normal work. The city will also ask private property owners to reduce rents for artists. Artists and cultural organisations paying property taxes will be exempted from this tax as well as from the waste disposal charge. Katowice has reserved €110,000 for the support package and had consulted local artists and city councillors in advance for the design. You can read more here (in Polish)  

Contact: Judyta Etmanska

Glasgow – International art festival goes online

After Scotland’s biennial festival of contemporary visual art, Glasgow International (Gi), has been postponed until 2021 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, an online programme has been published. Artists including Jenkin van Zyl, Yuko Mohri, Alberta Whittle and Liv Fontaine have made new work for the digital programme, which also showcases works by artists Georgina Starr, Urara Tsuchiya and Sarah Forrest and an audio introduction by Festival Director Richard Parry. The full programme is freely accessible until 10 May at glasgowinternational.org

Contact: Joe Brady

London – Emergency fund for music and arts

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has launched a new fund of emergency £2.3m (€2.6 million) to support culture and creative industries at risk due to the impact of the coronavirus. The money goes to grassroots music venues, LGBTQ+ venues, artist workspaces and independent cinemas. “Culture, creative industries and night time economy are so important to the fabric of our city”, said Sadiq Khan, “and they will play a key role in helping us to recover from this public health crisis.” You can read more here

Contact: Ian Catlow

Toulouse – Keeping culture alive

Toulouse metropole and Toulouse City Council are continuing to make many cultural offers free of charge online, but have further ensured that, for cancelled theatre shows, tickets can be refunded, and that engagement contracts with artists and technicians are honoured, even if work has not been carried out in full. Read more here

Contact: Isabelle Durou

Lisbon – Overview of cultural measures

Lisbon City Council has taken a range of extraordinary measures to protect culture. These include €200,000 in immediate support to the city’s Fado houses, as well as exemptions on rent payments for both cultural institutions and individual artists operating in municipal spaces. Read more here

Contact: Jose Pedro Gonçalves

Chemnitz – Open air gallery

Art and paintings will be displayed around the city to make pedestrians’ experience more joyful. The art collection will come along with a website where citizens will be able to read information on the pieces. This initiative is also part of Chemnitz’s candidacy to be European Capital of Culture in 2025. Read more here (in German)

Contact: Pia Sachs

Milan – Funding culture after corona

The city’s Deputy Mayor for Culture signed a petition addressed to the Italian Ministry of Culture to guarantee special support to the local creative sector. This includes measures such as: direct funding injections, specific allowances and benefits for workers from the cultural, entertainment, film, audiovisual and tourism sectors, welfare benefits for seasonal workers, insurance premiums for cultural enterprises and access to the 130 million euro emergency fund allocated by the national government. Read more here and here (in Italian)

Contact: Olimpia Vaccarino Aureli

Pesaro – Information desk for artists

Artists and cultural workers in the Italian region of Marche can get support via a temporary information desk that has been set up by the regional association Consorzio Marche Spettacolo. The city of Pesaro with deputy mayor Daniele Vimini, also president of the consortium, points out that local artists are experiencing tough days in the corona crisis, with culture being one of the most fragile sectors. The information desk, which can per reached by email, shall help cultural workers to get the support and assistance that the government is providing.

Contact: Filippo Galeazzi

Dusseldorf – Poems over the phone

The municipal Heinrich-Heine-Institute in Dusseldorf, a museum dedicated to the German poet Heinrich Heine, offers the reading of poems and other texts over the phone during the time it is closed due to the corona regulations. The museum also publishes educational videos, readings and quizzes on Instagram and Facebookto to keep eager Heine fans busy. Read more here (in German).

The municipal Clara Schumann music school offers digital music classes for its students. The lessons are conducted online or via video messages, students receive their music sheets online and send their rehearsed recordings to the teacher. Read more here (in German)

Contact: Stefanie Nietfeld

Dresden – Art and culture at home

The City of Dresden launched an Open Call #stayathomeandbecreative addressing professional freelance artists in Dresden to become creative from home. Artists are asked to send their recorded songs, readings, plays, DJ sessions or studio tours to the city, Whether GoPro, cell phone camera or Cinecamcorder – everything is allowed. Only the digital format is important. The selected clips will then be remunerated by the Office of Culture and Monument Preservation of the City of Dresden and will be presented online. The closing date for entries is 03 April 2020. See more here

Contact: Regine Kramer

Edinburgh – Funding for the arts

The City of Edinburgh Council has approved the immediate release of £4.69m (€5.32m) of cultural grant funding to support the cultural and creative sector in the city. The Cultural Grant Funding the Council provides annually is to be repurposed to support cultural organisations during Covid-19. Among others, this will support the Edinburgh Festivals, five of which have recently announced cancellation, as well as offer support to the wider cultural community. Grant funding has been specifically allocated to support the Council’s work on Diversity and Inclusion, providing support to BAME artists and cultural organisations in Edinburgh during COVID-19. read more here

Contact: Karen Lloyd

Bratislava – Artists call for corona discipline

Actors and artists in the city of Bratislava, Slovakia, have produced a video to motivate people to stay at home and help slowing down the spread of the corona virus. The main message of the film, which had been initiated by the city’s mayor: “Our most effective medicine is discipline.”

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