Mobility grants totalling EUR 150,000 awarded to 36 applicants
At its May meeting, the Board of Trustees of the Finnish Cultural Foundation approved the payment of mobility grants to 36 artists or groups, for a grand total of EUR 150,000.
The purpose of the Cultural Foundation’s mobility grant is to enable artists or teams to spend time abroad to discover new tools and networks that support their artistic practice. Applicants must spend a minimum of two weeks at the destination to qualify for the grant. Grants may be sought for expenses ranging from EUR 3,000 to 10,000, and acceptable uses of the grant include residency costs, festival participations, exhibition projects and travel related to international collaborations.
“As part of our March round of applications, we received 199 mobility grant applications, covering almost all fields of art. We have been pleased to witness the demand for this grant, which was first launched in August 2017. The standard of applications has remained high throughout,” says Senior Advisor Johanna Ruohonen from the Cultural Foundation.
In this round, only one EUR 10,000 grant was awarded, and it went to the joint production of the Helsinki-based theatre company Klockriketeatern and the American choir The Crossing, entitled Aniara – fragments of time and space, for its première in Philadelphia and a week-long festival appearance in the Netherlands. In September, Aniara will be shown in the Almi Hall of the Finnish National Opera.
The theatre group Jalostamo2, led by actor-playwright Anna Lipponen and production and lighting designer Petri Tuhkanen, received EUR 8,000 for a residency in Svalbard in July 2019. The working group is creating an episodic story and play entitled Ice Ice Baby, which concerns the Earth’s climate crisis and its effects on humans and wildlife. The work will premiere in Helsinki as part of Viirus theatre’s GUEST programme in November 2019.
Thanks to the active efforts of the International Romani Writers’ Association, founded in 2002 by Cultural Counsellor Veijo Baltzar, the first-ever Roma Pavilion will take place at Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2019. A mobility grant of EUR 3,500 will help cover related organisation and travel costs.
“Typically the projects or artists who receive our mobility grants have already arranged the funding they need for the work itself, but they still need to cover the costs of transporting artworks, acquiring event technology or travel for large groups of team members, among other things,” Ruohonen explains.
Applications for the Cultural Foundation’s mobility grants are accepted twice a year, in March and August.
