Deadline: 19 June 2020
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is seeking applications for the Creative Culture Program in Lebanon with an aim to foster the emergence of the practice of cultural creation in Western Armenian by giving opportunities and strengthening the means to create, produce, and distribute diverse cultural productions and achievements in Western Armenian.
In this context, the term culture is taken in its broad sense, mainly encompassing the arts, the humanities, and heritage, with a major emphasis on the creativity factor, namely on the establishment of a “culture” produced through new and innovative methods.
Objectives
Within the specific objective of reinforcing the use of Western Armenian as a language of creativity and innovation, the priorities of the CGF Creative Culture Program in Lebanon are to:
- Encourage young people to explore their creative potential in Armenian.
- Strengthen the youth’s participation in cultural life in general.
- Give opportunities to people with innovative approaches to help produce multi-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary cultural and creative works with the potential to facilitate the use of Western Armenian in new ways and to increase the capacity of cultural production in the language.
- Identify young individual talents who can be active agents in bringing Western Armenian to the forefront of their contemporary reality by making the language contemporaneous and relevant.
- Create the conditions for cultural initiatives in Western Armenian to flourish.
- Use the language as a creative medium outside the prevailing classic structures and paradigms.
The aforementioned objectives are implementable through and within the context of the following fundamental concepts:
- Reaffirming the importance of language and its development.
- Giving recognition to the distinctive nature of new innovative linguistic activities as vehicles of identity, values, and meaning.
- Establishing the necessity of being truly innovative and open to new concepts around cultural production by being free to move outside a maintained cultural status quo, and by fostering the link between Armenian culture and current global tendencies.
Funding Information
The CGF Creative Culture Program in Lebanon aims to fund up to 5 projects per year, this number can vary based on the number of applications received and the number of projects that merit funding. The amount of the grant will be up to a maximum of $5000 per year per project. The grant program also offers the possibility of renewing the grant if the nature of the project necessitates it, however, the same applicants cannot receive the grant over many consecutive years; each applicant is limited to making only two consecutive submissions.
Eligibility Criteria
- This call for proposals is open to creative individuals who are from 18 to 35 years old, who currently reside in Lebanon, and who are interested in creating innovative content in Western Armenian, within the framework of eligible activities that address the core components of this grant program. The grant program will accept individual as well as group submissions.
- The projects could include the following and other multi/inter-disciplinary proposals, within the scope of projects:
- Encompassing the arts, heritage (as a means of inspiration), and the humanities.
- Encompassing creative expressions of ideas, experiences, and emotions in a range of media, including:
- Music.
- Literature (books, audio books, journals, periodicals, websites, online presence).
- Theatre, performing arts.
- Visual arts.
- The interdisciplinary and hybrid forms that have emerged thanks to new media.
- Videos, installations, animations, blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, applications.
- Radio programs and creative broadcasting (on platforms such as: Mixcloud, SoundCloud, iTunes, etc.).
- Creative and innovative workshop programs
Evaluation Criteria
- The CGF Creative Culture Program in Lebanon will support creative individuals who are interested in developing innovative content in Western Armenian in the form of a project presenting:
- Creative value and innovative/creative character.
- Use of contemporary means of expression.
- Thematic relevance.
- Cultural diversity and projects that address contemporary and broader themes pertaining to humanity at large.
- Innovation in the use of Western Armenian.
- Quality of content and activities.
- The adoption of a forward-looking and forward-thinking approach.
- With a focus on projects that:
- Challenge cultural and artistic imagination.
- Reach a larger, targeted, or underserved audience.
- Engage youth and women.
- Include activities that are sustainable and will continue to have positive impacts after the end.
For more information, visit https://gulbenkian.pt/en/grant/creative-culture-program-in-lebanon/