Residencies around the Globe

Starting in 2012, in cooperation with the UNESCO City of Literature Reykjavik, the Goethe-Institut Denmark will award two grants each year to German authors from the areas of poetry and fiction, children’s and young people’s literature and comic artists.

The purpose of these literary grants is to provide recipients with an opportunity to conduct and develop their research, inspirations and working concepts into a literary project based on the country of Iceland as its point of departure and/or its source of inspiration.

The six-week stay also offers an opportunity to get to know the local art scene, make and deepen contacts as well as to exchange ideas and impulses with Icelandic colleagues. Parallel to this, the invited artists can report on their experiences in Reykjavik in a blog project.

The Artist-in-Residence programme of the Goethe-Institut Porto Alegre is one of the first such programmes created by the Goethe-Institut. Since 1997, it has enabled German artists to take part in residencies in Brazil, and was distinguished with the city’s art award “Açorianos” in 2010 and 2012 for its outstanding contribution to supporting next-generation artists.
In cooperation with the artists’ association „Atelier Subterranea“, young artists from Germany working in the visual arts area are supported. At present, the “Atelier Subterranea” is the most active and most recently emerged artists’ collective in Porto Alegre and an ideal meeting point for exchange with local artists. Networking with the local art scene in Porto Alegre and next-generation Brazilian artists is a central aspect of this artists’ residence.

Each year, an artist is invited to spend six weeks in Porto Alegre, and at the end of the stay to present his or her works to the public with an artistic action (exhibition, performance, installation) corresponding to the residency programme’s yearly thematic focus; in 2012 “Video and Film”.

Together with the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Art, the Goethe-Institut Lithuania is awarding a two-month grant for a representative of professional visual arts from Germany.

The Nida Art Colony stands for innovative educational and cultural projects in the area of the arts, in which the creative energies from Lithuania and from abroad are combined. The modern spaces of the residence are located on the Curonian Spit, a 98 km long peninsula separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea.
Recipients can benefit from the international networking and the numerous accompanying events of the Nida Art Colony and also present their works to the public as part of the Thomas Mann Festival in Nida.

The Goethe-Institut New York and BII Bibliothek & Information International, the standing committee of the Federal Union of German Library and Information Associations (BID), annually issue a call for applications to the Librarian in Residence programme. It is Goethe-Institut’s sole residency programme for librarians and offers experts from Germany an opportunity to enter into a deeper dialogue with American colleagues through a four-week stay in the USA.

The call for applications has a specific theme that changes from year to year. To date, multicultural library work, lobbying for general libraries and school libraries were among the residencies’ focal points.

In the course of their stay, the German participants describe in a blog their impressions and experiences of the library landscape in the United States, and they are also asked to report in various forums following their return to Germany.

MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38 is the exhibition space for contemporary art of the Goethe-Institut New York in cooperation with MINI. It is a curatorial experiment in the tradition of the German “Kunstvereine” and is located between Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Chinatown.

Since 2008, following successful co-operations with the Kunstverein München and the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, “Ludlow 38” evolved into a venue whose impact is strongly meshed with the characteristic perspective and energy of its respective curator.

As a non-profit, public-service exhibition venue, “Ludlow 38” is one of the few art spaces in New York tasked with introducing critical thinking and new artists into the local art scene. In the course of a residential year, the curator realises six exhibitions representing current European and global positions in the aesthetic and political context of New York and the USA.

In order to establish a lasting exchange in the area of contemporary dance, and to strengthen the network between dance artists in Germany and Canada, the Goethe-Institut Montréal and Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique are offering German choreographers a yearly grant to develop new pieces.

The invited artists have the opportunity to work in a studio in Montréal for up to three weeks and to present their work to the public. With this residency programme, which is modelled on Germany’s typically diverse spectrum of dance residencies, a creative venue and infrastructure are to be made available to professional dancers in Canada to realise their ideas and projects as well.

In 2011, the first artist villa of the Goethe-Institut opened in Kyoto on the occasion of the 150 year anniversary of the German-Japanese relations.

As a program of the Goethe-Institut, the Villa Kamogawa offers German artists and people active in culture the opportunity, to live and work in Japan on a three months scholarship.

The residency in Kyoto should serve as an inspiration and as an artistic orientation to the scholarship holders. In direct, personal exchange with the local cultural scene, they can develop new projects and can establish or strengthen work contacts with Japanese cultural Institutions and people active in culture.

In this manner, an intercultural dialogue unfolds, which enriches both the scholarship holders and the Japanese cultural scene.

The partner cities of Rotterdam and Dresden both have an active, lively art scene and offer a large selection of art museums and galleries. Each year, in the context of an artist exchange and in cooperation with the cultural agencies of both cities, the Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam and the Kunsthaus Raskolnikoff, the Goethe-Institut Niederlande in Rotterdam and the Goethe-Institut Dresden award two grants to visual artists and invite them to spend two months in their respective partner cities.

The purpose of these stays is to offer the recipients the opportunity to work on new projects in a different cultural environment, get to know the local art scene, make contacts and exchange ideas and inspirations.

With the European Translators’ Programme, the Goethe-Institut, in cooperation with the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. and the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, awards up to seven work grants annually to literary translators from abroad.

During the grant holders’ six- to eight-week residencies in Germany, the centres of the two cooperation partners, Gut Siggen on the Baltic Sea and in Dresden-Hellerau, serve as living quarters and workplace.

In a tranquil and concentrated work atmosphere, the grant holders can devote themselves to a current project in German-language literature. Where possible, meetings with the authors being translated and/or visits to publishers in the region round off the residency.

The International Forum is a two-week internationally announced programme for theatre professionals: directors, stage and costume designers, actors, playwrights, authors or other art professionals.

The International Forum’s specific purpose is to support young theatre professionals through an independent programme at the "Theatertreffen" of the Berliner Festspiele. An annual workshop programme which takes up current artistic themes and issues and presents a range of different methodical approaches and perspectives is the focal point.

The International Forum is a cooperation of the Berliner Festspiele with the Goethe-Institut Munich and the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia. It is funded by the German Theatre and Orchestra Association (Deutscher Bühnenverein) and the ministries of culture of the German states.

The success of a literary translation presupposes an experienced translator who is thoroughly familiar with the latest language processes and developments in the country of his mother tongue, and is also intensively engaged with the culture of this language. At the same time, translators are crucial transporters of literature, both in their own and in the target language.

For this reason, beginning in 2012 with “En tránsito” the TyPA Foundation (Buenos Aires), together with the Literarisches Kolloquium Berlin (LCB) and the Goethe-Institut Buenos Aires, and within the context of the programme “Buenos Aires: Übersetzungsport” (i.e. Buenos Aires: translation port), will award two grants to a German-language and an Argentinian translator. They will have an opportunity to work on their current projects for one month in Berlin or Buenos Aires respectively, as well as to make use of the time for meetings with local partners and translators.

A dedicated German-Argentinian network can ultimately emerge from such encounters, and set new impulses fort he translation sector on the Rio de La Plata.

Located in the heart of Bangalore, the artists’ residence 1 Shanti Road, run by the artists’ initiative of the same name, offers an open space for dialogue, inspiration and creativity with its living and work facilities. In 2009, in cooperation with the artists’ residence, the Goethe-Institut Bangalore developed a residency programme to enable German artists to address the realities of life in this metropolis with its 8 million inhabitants and develop on-site projects.

For up to two months, invited artists can continue or perfect their own art projects, and present them in an “open studio” exhibition at the conclusion of their stay. As a celebrated meeting-place for experimental contemporary art, 1 Shanti Road is ideal for engagement with the local art scene.

Located directly next to the KH Double Road is the art centre Jaaga, in the heart of the pulsating and modern Indian metropolis Bangalore. Jaaga defines itself as a “Creative Common Ground”, and “seeks to raise the profile of contemporary art in Indian society, promote young artists and innovative projects as well as supporting international networks”.

The Jaaga Community’s flexibility, spontaneity and open-mindedness are expressed in the construction of the building itself: built on three levels, it has practically no isolating intermediate elements or external walls, the various work spaces flow into each other.

The Goethe-Institut Bangalore/Max Mueller Bhavan supports Jaaga, which includes an artists’ residence, by awarding three grants annually.
The grant is aimed at artists dealing with socially or environmentally relevant urban art practices or interdisciplinary art forms, or who are engaged with technologically relevant themes and discourses.