LAC Residency, CONTESTED DESIRES, Akeelah Bertram, 2020, Photo, Jorge Pereira
call for partners, contested desires: difficult conversations
Challenging cultural narratives and storytelling around our shared and contested colonial legacy through arts and heritage.
A Creative Europe Application: Call Out for Partners on behalf of the CONTESTED DESIRES programme
Lead organisation: ECCOM
Access this call out as a PDF here: drive.google.com/file/
We are looking for 4-8 European and international partners for a large-scale Creative Europe Cooperation project to be submitted in mid-2021. We are looking for a balance of larger institutions and public bodies, and smaller independent organisations and NGOs.
CONTESTED DESIRES is a current small-scale transnational capacity building programme for artists and producers (D6: Culture in Transit, ECCOM, La Bonne, Fresh Milk, Xarkis and LAC) engaging with communities and heritage spaces. With a focus on exchange and learning, the programme offers unique opportunities for artists and cultural professionals to explore our shared heritage through research, workshops, residencies and exhibitions. Working in the UK, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, and Barbados CONTESTED DESIRES digs deep to reveal the links between our colonising ancestors and our cultural identities today.
We are now seeking partners to develop a large-scale project, CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations. Building on the first iteration, we will expand geographical reach and perspectives, connecting the global North and South. We will explore contested colonial legacies and consider decolonisation, activism and resistance within the frame of imperialist European power structures and narratives.
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT
From the Greeks, to the Romans, the Ottomans to the Venetians, from the seafaring nations of Northern and Western Europe embarking on crusades and trade missions, European colonial history (from the position of the colonisers and the colonised) forms part of a global and complex cultural heritage. A legacy of individuals, communities and nation states constructing their identities through a mosaic of cultural choices and desires. A contested legacy.
Established ideas about European culture and history are often deeply entrenched. The recent galvanisation of global movements including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and climate change protests marked a significant period of global transruptions offering an urgent critical lens on the intersectionality of climate emergency, social justice, equality and equity. From the local to international, there is a fascinating, complex and diverse ecosystem for change. Despite this, when voices are amplified, they are often quickly silenced if heard or systemically held on the margins.
ARTS AND HERITAGE CONTEXT
In national narratives, former colonial practices are still maintained as symbols of national identity. This influences the content of cultural programmes, and creates conditions for systematic exclusion. Undeniably, there are limitations and competing interests between actors involved in cultural heritage, and tensions between the institutional and independent sectors, which often set limits around conversations and disempower those who care.
Museums and heritage organisations are the formal custodians of cultural heritage across our urban and rural environments. Their scales and governance structures vary widely, be it state funded, independent or non-accredited. In their various manifestations, they are often in the eye of the political storm.
Heritage professionals can face moments of jeopardy, where risk or experimentation for systemic change is slow, reluctant or politically discouraged.
Contemporary artwork, artists and cultural professionals are often invited into museums and heritage spaces as agents for social transformation, to reveal narratives that are not currently represented in these institutions. The critical intervention of contemporary art might not be fully supported or aligned to the values of the institution, remaining temporary, on the margins, or problematic - perhaps even, shouldering the risk that institutions feel unable to take, despite inviting the conversation in.
This is amplified by a typically top-down approach involving administrative and bureaucratic systems, directed by experts and state administrators. Notably, these processes are equivalent to the time that could be spent to decolonize practices and retell the story of colonialism through a contemporary ethical framework.
Cultural heritage extends far beyond institutional representations. In addressing problematic retellings or erasure of our colonial past, independent arts organisations and artist collectives can be more responsive due to the evolutionary nature of their practice. Calls for decolonisation, activism and resistance surface through this practice through different perspectives and motivations. Equally, communities and groups organise to create autonomous spaces where they can own and develop systems of reconciliation within the fractures of inequality.
The arts and heritage generally share core values around learning, debate and respect for truth. To help contemporary society reach a broader settlement with regard to the past, we need to dismantle colonial and racist practices inherent in current approaches: to build spaces for truth and reconciliation across institutional and independent practice; to challenge narratives and storytelling. Within each community, region and country, shared cultural heritage is inextricably complex. It is tangible and intangible; nuanced but distilled, relevant yet treated as a fixed entity; stable, familiar and rooted for some, yet traumatic, alienating and destabilising for others.
Constructed and colonial narratives threaten to prevail through the tight rein of the establishment’s supremacy and what is deemed authentic. As alienation grows, people are turning their back on each other and forget that there is an interdependent need to re-tell colonial history together. Holding the space for difficult conversations and interventions across local and transnational platforms could not be more timely.
Based on the social role of history and the idea of cultural heritage as a value shaping the past and the future, we wish to co-create spaces for difficult conversations using a bottom-up and collaborative approach as we call out to new partners.
This project will address the following questions:
SCOPE
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations begins with heritage institutions and museums working in equal partnership with organisations working with artists, communities and partners.
We aim to develop an equitable methodology and create meaningful dialogue to extend the depth, shared understanding and approaches of cultural organisations who are thinking deeply about cultural heritage and how it is understood locally. We will compare how heritage institutions and artists and producers speak to this complex subject, and explore the role of contemporary art in questioning and open up narratives of history and identity to scrutiny.
In this transnational programme, we will also consider cross-cutting concerns that impact our practice as international producers, including environmental sustainability and the intersections of racial justice, social justice and climate justice.
The structure/component parts
We seek to develop a multi-faceted response to this context, which may include:
We welcome an opportunity to shape the project with new partners.
CREATIVE EUROPE
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations will be submitted as a large-scale application to the Creative Europe programme’s Culture strand, which we anticipate will have the following priorities:
The guidelines for proposals have not been published at the time of this call out, and some or all of these priorities may differ in the final call for proposals.
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHIES
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations will focus its lens on European Colonialism and its relationship with the Global South. In this process, Europe must be understood both as a source of colonialism (especially colonialist ideology) and as a territory of colonialism from the Classical world to the empires of the 19th and 20th centuries. While we keep one eye on the past, we recognise that colonialist ideologies and structures exist today and through this process we will reflect on our own ethics of practice and the role the arts and heritage sectors can play in challenging and decolonising their spheres of influence.
PARTNER SEARCH
We are looking for 4-8 European and international partners, with a balance of larger institutions and public bodies, as well as smaller independent organisations and NGOs. We invite applications from partners with experience of international working, although Creative Europe experience is not required.
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations seeks partners from geographies that represent European Colonialism and its relationship with the Global South.
We specifically want to reach culturally diverse organisations who are actively initiating difficult conversations around colonialism. We are interested in organisations not doing this on behalf of, but with and led by professionals and communities whose lived and/or personal experience reflect the central concerns of CONTESTED DESIRES.
We welcome interest from partners who:
(1) host residencies for artists working across visual arts and culture;
(2) are, or have an established or emerging relationship with, a heritage organisation or museum;
(3) have a strong track record in supporting creative engagement and participatory practices within their cultural context;
(4) have a strong research practice in relation to the themes of the project.
We welcome partners from Europe and beyond (within the guidelines of the Creative Europe programme), including partners considered third countries within the Creative Europe programme, and associate partners. Alongside individual partners, we would be interested to hear from consortia including an arts organisation and a heritage organisation, with one organisation leading as a Partner on the project. We seek to include in the project’s geography countries that are sites and respective sources of colonialism (partners that work across territories may represent multiple geographies).
Each partner will take a lead on mutually agreed areas of responsibility over the duration of the project. We expect individual Partner budgets will total between €40.000 - €600.000 across 4 years of activity.
EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND EQUITY
We seek to ensure that no one is treated less favourably on grounds of race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, gender, gender identity, marital or civil partnership status, disability, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, age, social class or offending background.
Whilst both Equality and Equity promote fairness, equality achieves this through treating everyone the same regardless of need, while equity achieves this through treating people differently depending on need. We welcome discussion on how the project can be designed to remove barriers to the participation of organisations of different scales.
EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
To submit an Expression of Interest, please outline the following on one side of A4:
Please also confirm:
Please email this information to [email protected] by 14 May 2021 (5pm CET time)
Selection will be made by a panel from the existing CONTESTED DESIRES partnership. We seek to achieve a balance of geography, scale and type of organisation across the partnership.
TIMELINE FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND CREATIVE EUROPE SUBMISSION
Subject to the Creative Europe application, we anticipate a collaborative project over 4 years.
14 May 2021
Deadline for Expressions of Interest
14 May onwards 2021
Expressions of Interest short-listed. Short-list partners contacted by ECCOM for exploratory discussions.
May - July 2021
Proposal development and completion meeting with partners
August/September 2021 (TBC)
Application submitted to Creative Europe (subject to the above)
Spring 2022 (TBC)
Outcome of application announced
Summer 2022 (TBC)
Project Start Date
For further information, please contact us at [email protected].
For more information about Creative Europe, please visit: www.creativeeuropeuk.eu/
A Creative Europe Application: Call Out for Partners on behalf of the CONTESTED DESIRES programme
Lead organisation: ECCOM
Access this call out as a PDF here: drive.google.com/file/
We are looking for 4-8 European and international partners for a large-scale Creative Europe Cooperation project to be submitted in mid-2021. We are looking for a balance of larger institutions and public bodies, and smaller independent organisations and NGOs.
CONTESTED DESIRES is a current small-scale transnational capacity building programme for artists and producers (D6: Culture in Transit, ECCOM, La Bonne, Fresh Milk, Xarkis and LAC) engaging with communities and heritage spaces. With a focus on exchange and learning, the programme offers unique opportunities for artists and cultural professionals to explore our shared heritage through research, workshops, residencies and exhibitions. Working in the UK, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, and Barbados CONTESTED DESIRES digs deep to reveal the links between our colonising ancestors and our cultural identities today.
We are now seeking partners to develop a large-scale project, CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations. Building on the first iteration, we will expand geographical reach and perspectives, connecting the global North and South. We will explore contested colonial legacies and consider decolonisation, activism and resistance within the frame of imperialist European power structures and narratives.
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT
From the Greeks, to the Romans, the Ottomans to the Venetians, from the seafaring nations of Northern and Western Europe embarking on crusades and trade missions, European colonial history (from the position of the colonisers and the colonised) forms part of a global and complex cultural heritage. A legacy of individuals, communities and nation states constructing their identities through a mosaic of cultural choices and desires. A contested legacy.
Established ideas about European culture and history are often deeply entrenched. The recent galvanisation of global movements including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and climate change protests marked a significant period of global transruptions offering an urgent critical lens on the intersectionality of climate emergency, social justice, equality and equity. From the local to international, there is a fascinating, complex and diverse ecosystem for change. Despite this, when voices are amplified, they are often quickly silenced if heard or systemically held on the margins.
ARTS AND HERITAGE CONTEXT
In national narratives, former colonial practices are still maintained as symbols of national identity. This influences the content of cultural programmes, and creates conditions for systematic exclusion. Undeniably, there are limitations and competing interests between actors involved in cultural heritage, and tensions between the institutional and independent sectors, which often set limits around conversations and disempower those who care.
Museums and heritage organisations are the formal custodians of cultural heritage across our urban and rural environments. Their scales and governance structures vary widely, be it state funded, independent or non-accredited. In their various manifestations, they are often in the eye of the political storm.
Heritage professionals can face moments of jeopardy, where risk or experimentation for systemic change is slow, reluctant or politically discouraged.
Contemporary artwork, artists and cultural professionals are often invited into museums and heritage spaces as agents for social transformation, to reveal narratives that are not currently represented in these institutions. The critical intervention of contemporary art might not be fully supported or aligned to the values of the institution, remaining temporary, on the margins, or problematic - perhaps even, shouldering the risk that institutions feel unable to take, despite inviting the conversation in.
This is amplified by a typically top-down approach involving administrative and bureaucratic systems, directed by experts and state administrators. Notably, these processes are equivalent to the time that could be spent to decolonize practices and retell the story of colonialism through a contemporary ethical framework.
Cultural heritage extends far beyond institutional representations. In addressing problematic retellings or erasure of our colonial past, independent arts organisations and artist collectives can be more responsive due to the evolutionary nature of their practice. Calls for decolonisation, activism and resistance surface through this practice through different perspectives and motivations. Equally, communities and groups organise to create autonomous spaces where they can own and develop systems of reconciliation within the fractures of inequality.
The arts and heritage generally share core values around learning, debate and respect for truth. To help contemporary society reach a broader settlement with regard to the past, we need to dismantle colonial and racist practices inherent in current approaches: to build spaces for truth and reconciliation across institutional and independent practice; to challenge narratives and storytelling. Within each community, region and country, shared cultural heritage is inextricably complex. It is tangible and intangible; nuanced but distilled, relevant yet treated as a fixed entity; stable, familiar and rooted for some, yet traumatic, alienating and destabilising for others.
Constructed and colonial narratives threaten to prevail through the tight rein of the establishment’s supremacy and what is deemed authentic. As alienation grows, people are turning their back on each other and forget that there is an interdependent need to re-tell colonial history together. Holding the space for difficult conversations and interventions across local and transnational platforms could not be more timely.
Based on the social role of history and the idea of cultural heritage as a value shaping the past and the future, we wish to co-create spaces for difficult conversations using a bottom-up and collaborative approach as we call out to new partners.
This project will address the following questions:
- Who has the power?: Who holds the power regarding the narratives around our shared and contested colonial heritage and how do politics and nationalism influence practice within institutional contexts?
- How do we shift the power?: How does exchange, understanding and learning from the multifaceted perspectives representing the coloniser and the colonised; indigenous, diasporic, and displaced communities transform into fair cultural equity?
- Dismantling heritage narratives, working towards just societies: How have the deep-rooted inaccuracies, sanitisation and erasure of colonial heritage impacted on our ability to address racial and social injustice?
- Cultural transformation: How is collective responsibility transformed into meaningful acts of change? How do we balance urgent and critical change and transformative processes centred around trust (in practice manifesting as slow and considered models of engagement)?
SCOPE
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations begins with heritage institutions and museums working in equal partnership with organisations working with artists, communities and partners.
We aim to develop an equitable methodology and create meaningful dialogue to extend the depth, shared understanding and approaches of cultural organisations who are thinking deeply about cultural heritage and how it is understood locally. We will compare how heritage institutions and artists and producers speak to this complex subject, and explore the role of contemporary art in questioning and open up narratives of history and identity to scrutiny.
In this transnational programme, we will also consider cross-cutting concerns that impact our practice as international producers, including environmental sustainability and the intersections of racial justice, social justice and climate justice.
The structure/component parts
We seek to develop a multi-faceted response to this context, which may include:
- Artistic residencies, productions and exhibitions;
- An expansion of capacity building developed through CONTESTED DESIRES (workshops, webinars, digital artworks and responses), with wider dissemination (conference, online tools, podcasts);
- Research and writing;
- Professional development for partners (Producer residencies/ work exchanges);
- Spaces to reflect throughout process (with partners, artists and audiences)
We welcome an opportunity to shape the project with new partners.
CREATIVE EUROPE
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations will be submitted as a large-scale application to the Creative Europe programme’s Culture strand, which we anticipate will have the following priorities:
- (a) strengthen cross-border dimension and circulation of European cultural and creative operators and works;
- (b) increase cultural participation across Europe;
- (c) promote societal resilience and social inclusion through culture and cultural heritage;
- (d) enhance the prosperity of European cultural and creative sectors and generate jobs and growth;
- (e) strengthen European identity and values through cultural awareness, arts education and culture-based creativity in education;
- (f) promote international capacity building of European cultural and creative sectors to be active at the international level;
- (g) contribute to the European Union's global strategy for international relations through cultural diplomacy.
The guidelines for proposals have not been published at the time of this call out, and some or all of these priorities may differ in the final call for proposals.
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHIES
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations will focus its lens on European Colonialism and its relationship with the Global South. In this process, Europe must be understood both as a source of colonialism (especially colonialist ideology) and as a territory of colonialism from the Classical world to the empires of the 19th and 20th centuries. While we keep one eye on the past, we recognise that colonialist ideologies and structures exist today and through this process we will reflect on our own ethics of practice and the role the arts and heritage sectors can play in challenging and decolonising their spheres of influence.
PARTNER SEARCH
We are looking for 4-8 European and international partners, with a balance of larger institutions and public bodies, as well as smaller independent organisations and NGOs. We invite applications from partners with experience of international working, although Creative Europe experience is not required.
CONTESTED DESIRES: Difficult Conversations seeks partners from geographies that represent European Colonialism and its relationship with the Global South.
We specifically want to reach culturally diverse organisations who are actively initiating difficult conversations around colonialism. We are interested in organisations not doing this on behalf of, but with and led by professionals and communities whose lived and/or personal experience reflect the central concerns of CONTESTED DESIRES.
We welcome interest from partners who:
(1) host residencies for artists working across visual arts and culture;
(2) are, or have an established or emerging relationship with, a heritage organisation or museum;
(3) have a strong track record in supporting creative engagement and participatory practices within their cultural context;
(4) have a strong research practice in relation to the themes of the project.
We welcome partners from Europe and beyond (within the guidelines of the Creative Europe programme), including partners considered third countries within the Creative Europe programme, and associate partners. Alongside individual partners, we would be interested to hear from consortia including an arts organisation and a heritage organisation, with one organisation leading as a Partner on the project. We seek to include in the project’s geography countries that are sites and respective sources of colonialism (partners that work across territories may represent multiple geographies).
Each partner will take a lead on mutually agreed areas of responsibility over the duration of the project. We expect individual Partner budgets will total between €40.000 - €600.000 across 4 years of activity.
EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND EQUITY
We seek to ensure that no one is treated less favourably on grounds of race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, gender, gender identity, marital or civil partnership status, disability, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, age, social class or offending background.
Whilst both Equality and Equity promote fairness, equality achieves this through treating everyone the same regardless of need, while equity achieves this through treating people differently depending on need. We welcome discussion on how the project can be designed to remove barriers to the participation of organisations of different scales.
EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
To submit an Expression of Interest, please outline the following on one side of A4:
- Your response to the theme, why this project interests you and how you can see your organisation being involved (250 words);
- Your experience of working transnationally and evidence of partnership work and project/ administrative management;
- Outline of your organisation with relevant URLs.
Please also confirm:
- Your legal status and date of incorporation;
- That you have the authority to sign a cooperation agreement;
- That you are able to honour the commitment of this proposal;
- Availability to contribute to the development of the project application.
Please email this information to [email protected] by 14 May 2021 (5pm CET time)
Selection will be made by a panel from the existing CONTESTED DESIRES partnership. We seek to achieve a balance of geography, scale and type of organisation across the partnership.
TIMELINE FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND CREATIVE EUROPE SUBMISSION
Subject to the Creative Europe application, we anticipate a collaborative project over 4 years.
14 May 2021
Deadline for Expressions of Interest
14 May onwards 2021
Expressions of Interest short-listed. Short-list partners contacted by ECCOM for exploratory discussions.
May - July 2021
Proposal development and completion meeting with partners
August/September 2021 (TBC)
Application submitted to Creative Europe (subject to the above)
Spring 2022 (TBC)
Outcome of application announced
Summer 2022 (TBC)
Project Start Date
For further information, please contact us at [email protected].
For more information about Creative Europe, please visit: www.creativeeuropeuk.eu/