The Endangered Landscapes Artist Residencies and Arts Prize is a new collaboration between two programmes at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative: the Arts, Science and Conservation Programme and the Endangered Landscapes Programme. Both the ELP and ASCP are keen to encourage collaborative, interdisciplinary arts practice that celebrates the landscapes and communities supported by the ELP and that reveal the hopes, ambitions and opportunities that come with landscape restoration.
The arts and cultural practice are a powerful means of reawakening our sense of the familiar, connecting to the past, and exploring possible futures. They play a pivotal role in addressing environmental challenges and are a compelling route into understanding how people are connected to landscape. Art can often articulate emotional connections to a landscape in entirely new ways.
Following a two-stage application process, eight artists, or collectives, will be selected to be in residence in the eight endangered landscapes currently receiving Project Implementation Grants. Residencies will begin in June 2021 and run through until April 2022, coronavirus restrictions permitting. The additional prize will be awarded to the artist of outstanding merit at the end of the residency period.
The project locations are: Cairngorms Connect (Scotland, UK), Carpathian Mountains (Romania), Danube Delta, Gökova Bay to Cape Gelidonya (Turkey), Greater Côa Valley (Portugal), Iori River Valley (Georgia), Polesia (Belarus & Ukraine), Summit to Sea (Wales, UK).
Residencies are accompanied with individual awards of between $3150 and $5400. Following completion of residencies, an additional prize of $2500 will be made to the most exceptional artist.
Applicants can be working in any medium, but should be over 25 years of age and have a substantial track record of relevant experience. They should also have a demonstrable link to one of the countries of their chosen landscape and ideally a link to the landscape itself. The should also be able to speak the local language of their chosen landscape.
