Sub-Saharan Africa
Revolutionary cultural cooperation model connecting African and European artists through mobility, strengthened cultural spaces, performing arts circulation, and visual arts collaboration. Bottom-up approach creating sustainable networks, moving beyond traditional funding toward genuine partnership and artist-driven cultural ecosystems.
Connection & Creation: Redefining Cultural Partnerships
The Sub-Saharan Africa Continental Component represents a fundamental reimagining of how cultural cooperation works between Africa and Europe. Rather than traditional top-down funding models, we've built a comprehensive ecosystem that prioritises connection, creation, and genuine partnership across artistic disciplines and geographical boundaries.At its heart, this component addresses a critical gap: the need for sustainable, artist-led cultural networks that transcend colonial-era cooperation patterns. Through four interconnected pillars—mobility support, arts and culture spaces strengthening, performing arts circulation, and visual arts collaboration—we create pathways for meaningful cultural exchange that benefit practitioners on both continents equally.
Our mobility scheme breaks down barriers that have historically limited African and European artists' movement, offering both short-term project-based exchanges and dedicated performing arts touring support. This isn't just about funding travel; it's about creating lasting professional relationships, market access, and collaborative opportunities that reshape careers and artistic practices.
Arts and culture spaces receive unprecedented support to become platforms for creation, co-production, and audience engagement. We recognise that sustainable cultural ecosystems require strong institutional foundations, so we invest in both infrastructure and programming capacity, enabling spaces to serve as catalysts for regional and international collaboration.
The performing arts pillar focuses on circulation and co-creation, supporting everything from touring initiatives to three-year partnerships between African and European structures. Our approach recognises that performing arts require different support models—longer development periods, higher mobility costs, and more complex logistical arrangements—so we've designed specific mechanisms that address these needs.
Visual arts collaboration emphasises co-creation over consumption, funding partnerships that result in new work, joint research, and critical discourse. Rather than simply exhibiting existing work, we support processes that generate fresh artistic content and scholarly understanding.
What makes this component revolutionary is its interconnectedness. A visual artist supported through mobility might later collaborate with a strengthened cultural space to create work that tours through performing arts networks. These aren't isolated grants but elements of a comprehensive system designed to create sustainable, artist-driven cultural networks.
We're moving beyond extractive funding models toward genuine partnership, where European and African cultural communities contribute equally to shared creative endeavours. This component doesn't just fund individual projects—it builds the infrastructure for decades of ongoing cultural cooperation rooted in mutual respect and shared creative ambition.
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