Artists’ residencies and creative industries will be the focus of the 3rd edition of Creative Encounters: Cultural Partnerships between Asia and Europe, an initiative of the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), Arts Network Asia (ANA) and Trans Europe Halles (TEH). Creative Encounters has been supporting artistic collaborations between Asian and European cultural organisations since 2011.
4 collaborative projects have been selected for support in 2014 from a pool of over 150 proposals received in response to a competitive open call. These 4 projects are briefly described below:
- EARS – Europe-Asia Roundtable Sessions is a dialogue platform for creative industry professionals and includes selected showcases and performances. It will be held in Helsinki, Finland in September 2014, alongside the Helsinki Design Week. EARS (Finland) and Modern Sky Entertainment (China) will collaborate on this project.
- Ties That Bind: Asia Europe Producers Workshop will gather film producers from both regions with potential feature films in development. The workshop, to be held in Udine, Italy in April 2014, is a collaboration among Fondo Audiovisivo Del Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), Far East Film Festival (Italy), Busan International Film Festival (Korea) and EAVE – European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (Luxembourg).
- Equilibrium will facilitate cross-disciplinary artists’ residencies in Partapur in Rajasthan, India exploring the social empowerment of women. The project, which will run from April to December 2014, is a collaboration among Sandarbh (India), Beneshawar Lok Vikas Sansthan (India) and Mainzer Kunstverein Walpodenstrat 21 e.V (Germany).
- Focus + Indonesia will organise a series of interdisciplinary mobile artist residencies in Indonesia, Germany and Poland, which respond to local community needs and mutual cultural education. The project will take place from February to May 2014 and is the result of a partnership among Jatiwangi Art Factory (Indonesia), Fundacja Upside Art (Poland) and the National Museum in Szczecin (Poland).
Creative industries are high on the cultural agenda of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), of which ASEF is the only permanent institution. Support to artists’ residencies and greater bi-directional mobility of artists between Asia and Europe will continue to be important areas of focus for ASEF. Through the ASEF Creative Networks initiative, ASEF will also support the establishment of the Asia-Europe Creative Residency Network in 2014 in collaboration with Res Artis, the largest existing network of artists’ residency programmes.