UNESCO-Aschberg 2012 Artistic Residence Scholarships

Literary creation, music and fine arts have room of their own in the UNESCO-Aschberg scholarships for young artists, a system that promotes mobility in a bid to enhance prize-winning projects and allows for a dialogue in terms of cultural diversity. Designed for artists between 25 and 35 years of age, since 1994 this program has played a leading role in the advance of artistic creation around the world since grantees can complete their training in other countries, thus living totally different experiences that relativize their own visions of the world and energize the contents of their artworks.

The Aschberg Program is based on the UNESCO policies aimed at fostering creativeness and diversity in a way that meet the objectives of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expression Diversity (2005). It’s in the program’s best interest to lift awareness on the South-South and North-South cooperation, a reason why artists and institutions from developing countries are given top priority.

Each residence space reaches out to a specific call, but deadlines for handing in application for the 2013 scholarships will be over between Oct. 15 and Nov. 30. In visual arts, a total of ten invitations will be announced, from institutions in Australia (Bundanon Trust), Brazil (Sacatar Foundation), Colombia (Centro Colombo Americano de Medellin), France (Camac), Italy (Civitella Ranieri Center and UNIDEE-Citadellarte), Korea (Changdong National Art Studio), United States (Djerassi Resident Artists Program), Morocco (Dar al Ma’Mûn) and Canada (La Chambre Blanche).

The sale of a castle donated to UNESCO by the Aschbergs, a couple of Swede philanthropists, led to the creation of the UNESCO-Aschberg scholarship program back in 1994. At the onset, the program covered five disciplines. Between 1994 and 2007, the program granted 650 scholarships in 149 institutions to students from 72 nations. In 2007, the program was called off temporarily and was submitted to an assessment in order to both beef up its principles in sync with the 2005 Convention and streamline the management efforts.

For further information and to access the 2012 application forms, please visit www.unesco.org or click on the link below:
http://www.unesco.org/new/es/culture/themes/creativity/aschberg-bursaries-for-artists/call-for-applications-2013/