European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists - EFFEA

The European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists - EFFEA is an initiative of the European Festivals Association that offers emerging artists a platform to develop their career on an international level through festivals.

The 2nd EFFEA call for festivals to support emerging artists opens in April

The 2nd EFFEA call for festivals to support emerging artists opens in April 2023.

The results of the 1st EFFEA call will be published on 31 January 2023.

What is EFFEA?

Emerging artists are the treasure of society, creative minds, explorers who have the power to shape the future through their art. The European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists - EFFEA was built exactly on this idea: to explore/discover these talents and to support emerging artists by offering them a platform to develop their career under festivals' wings; supporting them in their journey.

The activities include 50 residencies for emerging artists in the seat of 50 festivals: one leading festivals collaborating with at least two other festivals per project per year, based on an annual call to festivals. The Fund will foster and enable European visibility of emerging artists. It will address the needs of artists at different levels (research, capacity building, network, presentation platforms), the needs of festivals (programmers capacity building, alertness, internationalisation, collaboration), and audiences (access to diverse artists and arts works).

Who will benefit from this fund?

  • Festivals

How? Network and collaboration between festivals; New programmes and new artists for festivals; Financial support to promote the artists on a European level.

  • Emerging Artists under the wings of festivals

How? Research, Residencies / workshops / masterclasses; Presentations in several partnering festivals; European visibility.

Two types of residencies

3 festivals (one leading festival and two partner festivals) take one artist, collective, companie, ensemble, group... in all artistic disciplines for a residency under their wings between 1 February 2023 and 31 December 2023.

>>> 40 grants 1st Category > EFFEA “Discovery” Artist in residence of €8.000 early career artists, exceptional talent and ready to break through internationally.
The festival host, together with two other partners (festivals) creates the bridges through residencies, mentorships for the artist to develop his artistic idea.

>>> 10 grants 2nd Category > EFFEA “Springboard” Artist in residence of €15.000 mid-career artists, established in their own country, ready to develop their career internationally and who will present their work in three different stages, under the wings of the host / leading festival and two other partners.

Who is eligible to apply?

The EFFEA call will be open to all arts festivals (Architecture - Circus - Dance - Design, Applied arts - Digital arts - Film - Heritage - Literature - Music - Opera - Photography - Spoken word, Storytelling - Street Arts - Theatre - Visual arts) that are registered on FestivalFinder.eu.

If you are not present on FestivalFinder.eu yet, you can register your festival here: FestivalFinder.eu

Eligible countries

The EU member states: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden.
The Creative Europe countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Iceland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Ukraine
Other included countries (As partner festival. Artists can be proposed): Armenia, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom.

Interested to apply?

 The call for festivals will be launched on 14 October 2022.
 In the meantime, you can think and prepare:

  • the artist, that your festival will present
    The artist can be an individual artist, a collective of artists, an artist(s) company, an artist’s ensemble. All involved individuals can be of any age or gender. The artist(s) should have a nationality of or a residence address in one of the eligible countries.

  • the category, you are applying for: EFFEA “Discovery” or EFFEA “Springboard”
    A leading festival can apply for one project per category as a leading festival and apply for multiple grants as a partner for other projects.

  • two other partners , with whom you will develop the project.
    Didn’t decide yet? You can find your partners here FestivalFinder.eu

For more information: Donika Rudi Berishaj, EFFEA Coordinator: donika[@]efa-aef.eu

Keep in mind

  • The leading festival, as well as the partner festivals, exist for at least one edition;
  • An artist cannot be proposed in more than one project;
  • A leading festival can apply for one project per category as a leading project and apply for multiple grants as a partner for other projects, and residencies.

Timeline

- Publication of the pre-announcement of the EFFEA call (call 1): 29 September 2022
- Start online application: 14 October 2022
- Application deadline: 21 November 2022
- Results announcement: January 2023
- Publication of the selected artists and festivals on the EFFEA platform: February 2023
- Implementation period: February 2023 – December 2023

Info session

We organised an online info session to go in detail through the call on 13 October 2022. You can watch the recording of the session here below and go through the powerpoint that we have presented. Collected questions are all part of the "Frequently Asked Questions" page.

Credits

EFFEA is an initiative of the European Festivals Association, co-funded by the European Union, implemented in partnership with 14 EFFE Hubs: Croatian Composers Society (Croatia), PLMF Arts Management (Estonia), France Festivals (France), Festival Friends (Germany), Stichting Caucasus Foundation (Georgia), Summa Artium Kultúra Támogató Nonprofit Kft. (Hungary), Association of Irish Festival Events (Ireland), ItaliaFestival (Italy), ARC Research and Consultancy Ltd. (Malta), Asociația Centrul Cultural Clujean (Romania), ArtLink (Serbia), Sweden Festivals (Sweden), Izmir Foundation for Culture Arts and Education – IKSEV (Turkey), Development Centre "Democracy through Culture" (Ukraine).