Grants at Roberto Cimetta Fund, Paris 2011

Grants at Roberto Cimetta Fund, Paris 2011
The Roberto Cimetta Fund, is an international non-profit making organisation created in 1999 to respond rapidly and directly to artists and cultural managers who wish to travel in order to develop contemporary artistic cooperation projects in the Euro-Mediterranean region, and in particular throughout the Arab world.
Today it has provided mobility grants to almost 1000 artists and cultural operators and stands out as a key player and mediator on the questions of artistic mobility and cultural development in the Euro-Med zone.
The Fund builds up partnerships with foundations, ministries, local or regional governing bodies, European capitals of culture that wish to promote artistic works and productions and favour local development through a Fund capable of providing international expertise in cultural cooperation.

In countries of the South and East Med where economic and political difficulties weaken the potential of artistic production and the setting up of long term cultural projects and infrastructures, the Cimetta Fund can provide capacity building to emerging artists and cultural professionals and enable them to overcome the first obstacle to their projects by providing a travel grant to find partners, opportunities and resources.

The Cimetta Fund considers that mobility is an essential learning tool and a legitimate policy that recognises the free circulation of culture professionals. It addresses the questions of reciprocity and equal exchange, it gives equal support to incoming and outgoing artists, it provides interconnections in multicultural urban societies, it extends partnerships internationally… Mobility means intercultural dialogue where the artistic community can acquire intercultural competencies through confrontation, curiosity and permeation allowing for new forms of art and culture to emerge. Mobility is a round trip concept, directly linked to local development at the starting point. It is also a means to address the increasing centralising factor around major international cities that benefit from territorial favouritism. By structuring mobility to other cities and regions in Europe, we promote the values of the European space and help counterbalance this tendency, favouring cultural development and diversity elsewhere. Our action is all the more relevant in that we address the recommendations of the Unesco Convention and the Agenda 21 for Culture that call for the strengthening of multilateral relations between North and South and preferential treatment to artists and professionals from developing countries.

We are as such fully engaged in the aims of the “European Agenda for Culture in a globalised world” that promote culture and mobility as essential tools in the external relations of the European Union.

Our role is also to identify funding and policy issues and advocate for the sector by involving policymakers and institutions. A regional platform grouping together all the beneficiaries and partners of the Fund as well as representatives of civil society has been set up. Partnerships and joint projects are developing as a result of this that will improve communication tools, voice the opinions of the sector and seek to establish long term multilateral processes, policies and programmes.
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