Pro Helvetia Johannesburg is pleased to announce a new 3 year agreement with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
Their cooperation with the SDC extends back to 1999 and has played a powerful reinforcing role to our work in facilitating exchange, collaboration and connection between Switzerland the SADC region. The focus of our SDC-financed programme has for some years been on enabling transnational collaboration and exchange between artists, projects and organisations across the SADC region, with the aim of making a contribution to the development of a regional cultural fabric within SADC.The SDC has always taken culture into account in its work, and has a long tradition of supporting cultural expressions alongside concerns with hard development issues in the areas of, for example, health, education and governance. In the strategy 2013-2016 for Swiss international cooperation, culture and arts are for the first time explicitly mentioned as a means of realising development objectives. To this end, the SDC applies a ‘percent for culture’ principle to its development funding, whereby at least 1% of the overall SDC programme budget is used to support culture “in and of” SDC partner countries. Read more about the SDC here.
At the end of 2014, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg renewed its mandate to administer the SDC Southern African Regional Programme’s support for Arts & Culture for a further 3 years (from 2015-17).During this period we will exercise this support in two areas, the first being through micro- grants for short-term projects that involve collaboration between professional artists and arts organisations within the Southern African region (ANT Project funding and ANT Research grant).This funding stream also now enables artists, curators, managers and organisers to access funding to support research and project development trips to other countries in the region.
The second area is focused on support to existing projects and organisations that play a strong role in promoting a more networked and connected arts sector in the SADC region, whether through creative collaboration, sharing of skills and knowledge, or the presentation of significant creative voices from across the region. (Platform funding).
Geographically, the projects involve Southern African cross-border collaboration. Here Southern Africa includes Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Submission deadline is Friday 13th November 2015.
