Support Programme entails the Foundation's core business through which public calls for the financing of programmes and projects of CSOs active primarily in the field of contemporary arts and culture are published. The granting of non-refundable funds is based on principles of transparency, non-biasness, equal opportunities and non-discrimination. The non-refundable funds are granted through public calls for programmes/projects/activities proposals and public calls for participation in programmes/projects/activities. The calls have several programme areas and categories that are designed to answer the recognized priority problems of CSOs (associations and artistic organizations) and to ensure more beneficial working conditions of the CSOs, to contribute to their stabilization and to the development of organizational and programme capacities.

The public calls are usually published at the beginning of June, and the overall non-refundable funds granting process, that includes applications’ submission, formal conditions’ check, applications’ quality evaluation, publication of results and the time frame for complaints’ submission, response to complaints and contracting process, is finished by the end of December. Specific public calls can be published during other periods throughout the year. Applications are submitted exclusively in electronic form using the Foundation’s electronic application data base.

The Foundation does not see contemporary arts and culture as overall arts and culture made today but as experimental and research and/or critical and socially engaged praxis, and it sees CSOs as the key bringers of new tendencies in arts and culture. Such contemporary artistic and cultural praxis are directed towards exploring and re-examining boundaries between disciplines and areas, establishing new approaches and movements, stepping out esthetically and conceptually, innovative use of materials, methods, formats and media and overall opening up of new views, understandings and orientations in the world of arts and culture. These are also praxis that are directed towards social engagement and are oriented to the community and participation of various social groups and that today represent developmental potential because they detect and articulate various problems which contemporary society faces. Contemporary artistic and cultural praxis allow citizens to be actively involved and to participate in various cultural activities through different formats, approaches and channels, and this in turn raises citizens’ awareness on the importance of their engagement and active participation in the community. In accordance with the above stated, the Foundation has defined the Support Programme priorities through which it is possible to read what are the key baselines of contemporary arts and culture as the Foundation sees it. All applications must meet at least 3 of the 5 priorities at the organizational and the programme/project proposals level.

Support Programme Priorities

• being critical and reflexive (analytical and reflexive re-examination and representation of cultural, artistic, social, economic, political, ethical and/or ideological surroundings in which it is active)
• being divergent from dominant conceptions (positioning itself in relation to the dominant spatial, organizational, contextual and conceptual paradigms i.e., affirming the problems/trends/questions that the dominant meaning structures do not touch upon)
• being engaged (influencing the artistic, cultural, social, ethical, ideological, economic and/or political surroundings)
• being innovative (using new approaches, materials, methods, formats, media and so on and opening up of new views, understandings, orientations and so on in the world of arts and culture)
• having an experimental approach (questioning, finding, discovering, developing, describing, explaining and interpreting new functions, methods, values, ways of work, conceptions, positions and so on in the world of arts and culture)

The Foundation is continuously developing and re-thinking its activities and is always trying to improve programme areas and the overall granting process based on views and comments of the managing bodies and the administrative service, recommendations by the Committee for the evaluation of the quality of the applications, comments and suggestions of the users of the Foundation's funds and Support Programme applicants via public consultations. The Foundation finds communication and continuous dialogue with all the involved stakeholders crucial in its work, so please feel free to send us an e-mail if you have any questions, suggestions or comments about the Support Programme here.