European Platforms for the promotion of emerging artists

Objectives

This action will support projects that aim to increase the visibility and the circulation of European emerging artists and works outside their own borders, in Europe and beyond. It also seeks to increase access to and participation in cultural events and activities, as well as audience engagement and development. Such projects are also designed to contribute to the implementation of EU policy priorities in the culture field. In this regard, the circulation of artists and works can contribute to the activation of new and/or more sustainable cultural public spaces.

For the purpose of this action, projects shall establish Platforms that can be defined as showcase/springboard platforms composed of a coordinating organisation and member organisations with a common artistic editorial and branding strategy.

Themes and priorities (scope)

Further to the above-mentioned objective, proposals should mainstream the following themes and priorities:

• supporting emerging artists and cultural professionals and building adequate responses to the needs and challenges to support the internationalisation of their careers, which could include new models of creation, showcasing and exhibition, export strategy and distribution, and mobility and exchange

• promoting a fair, inclusive and diverse environment for emerging artists, looking particularly at effective ways to tackle the gender gap and fight discrimination. From this perspective, promoting equal opportunities, better working conditions and fair remuneration will be a strategic feature of proposed projects

• contributing to increasing the sectors’ environmental sustainability and awareness by demonstrating a capacity to propose and develop practices that contribute to the European Green Deal

Activites that can be funded (scope)

• Developing common actions in order to:

• promote, celebrate and boost the diversity of the European repertoire by developing a common European programming of non-national artists and ensuring the presence of these artists at major events, festivals, fairs and markets;

• develop a strong common communication and branding strategy, and establish a European quality label;

• promote and encourage the digital shift to adapt to the substantial changes in how cultural goods are created, managed, disseminated, accessed, consumed and monetised, changing the value propositions which prevailed in the analogue era;

• enforce peer-learning and networking, notably with other Platforms and other projects, actions and initiatives supported by Creative Europe;

• develop and strengthen management capabilities with activities such as coordination activities, meetings, evaluation, quality control, reporting, etc.

• Providing financial support to Platform’s members in order to:

• increase the European dimension and the geographic diversity of the members’ artistic programming by offering emerging artists concrete and professional opportunities to reach a new and diverse audience and develop their careers by giving more visibility to their talent and work outside their borders; train and nurture emerging talent, enforce measures to improve working conditions for emerging talents and cultural professionals.

Proposals should include suitable activities to meet the objective of the call and address the themes, priorities and cross-cutting issues in an effective way.

These activities should be formulated within a solid strategic framework and be structured in work packages. A work package is a major sub-division of the project. Each work package is accompanied by an objective (expected outcome) and should list the activities, milestones and deliverables that belong to it (See section 10 – Milestones and Deliverables)

Activities might be carried out both to complement and, as much as possible, be in synergy with: the European Commission’s pilot project on mobility (i-Portunus)^[1]; the Creative Europe Prizes and initiatives^[1] when relevant; the New European Bauhaus^[1] initiative.

Under this call for proposals, financial support to third parties is allowed. For more details see section 6 (Eligibility of activities).

The quality of the proposed activities, work packages, milestones and deliverables will be assessed under the award criterion ‘Quality of content and activities’. For more details, please check section 9 of this document.

Expected impact

The action aims to support about 15 platforms covering different cultural and creative sectors. As the support is intended to have a structuring effect, only a limited number of Platforms will be supported, with a view to achieving a balanced coverage across the different sectors. The intention is to support no more than one platform targeting the same type of artist or cultural work. This consideration will be taken into account by evaluators in the evaluation process.

Also, the action aims to have a critical impact on emerging artists and their careers, and as such the projects will have to:

• establish a platform composed of a coordinating organisation and member organisations (third parties);

• have a common coordinated artistic editorial strategy to identify and showcase European emerging artists and their works outside their own borders;

• provide financial support (re-granting) to help member organisations to boost the diversity, the European dimension and the visibility of their programming and to increase the number of supported emerging artists;

• specify in the proposal the definition of “emerging artist”, in agreement with the member organisations, according to the project and the cultural sector in which the Platform operates;

• commit to spend at least 70% of the amount granted per year to the artistic programming;

• support at least 50 emerging artists per year;

• build a strategy to increase the number of members.

All of these measures are mandatory and must be clearly detailed in the proposal.

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