OPEN CALL: Curatorial Proposals for the European Pavilion 2024

The European Cultural Foundation is pleased to announce a brand-new commissioning grant of up to 500,000 EUR to be awarded to one single organisation or one consortium of partners for the curation and hosting of the European Pavilion 2024.

Initiated by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) in 2020, the European Pavilion is a pan-European initiative that puts the question of Europe and its future(s) at the forefront through cultural projects and art commissions. It stems from ECF’s conviction that we need more cultural spaces that go beyond national remits when exploring and imagining what Europe is and what it can or should become.

It is no accident that the notion of a European Pavilion is reminiscent of World Expos and of the Venice Biennale that emerged from them. The European Pavilion is there to question in a constructive way the model of national pavilions and—more broadly—the national imaginaries they represent. Not to replace them, but to search for alternatives. The initiative is an opportunity to reinvent the pavilion, a versatile architectural object, as an experimental space for formulating new scenarios for Europe through culture.

Commissioned by ECF through a call for proposals, the European Pavilion presents an arts and culture programme from a pan-European point of view with the intention of making Europe more understandable and relatable as a socio-geographical and cultural space that connects us through shared as well as contested sentiments. Its activities, productions and events offer a rare opportunity to reflect on new and transnational perspectives explicitly about Europe.

As part of the European Pavilion 2024, ECF is launching an open call and inviting legal entities from all cultural and creative fields in Europe and neighbouring countries to submit an ambitious curatorial proposal that will ensure the visibility, accessibility and positioning of the European Pavilion as a major European cultural event in 2024.

You can read the full open call on the website.

If your organisation would like to curate the European Pavilion 2024 and is ready to take on the challenge of making an important artistic contribution to the future imaginary of Europe, please submit your proposal by September 14, 2023, at 1pm CEST.

About the European Cultural Foundation
The European Cultural Foundation was founded in 1954 to help construct a united Europe where we can live, work, play, dream and express ourselves freely, share a sense of belonging based on solidarity and mutual respect, and collaborate across borders of all kinds, in harmony and in the fullness of our diversity. Since then, the European Cultural Foundation has initiated and supported projects in culture, civil society, environment and education throughout Europe to promote this sense of belonging. In its nearly 70 years of existence, the foundation has supported thousands of Europeans and organisations with grants and exchanges and has succeeded in putting culture and cultural policies on the European agenda.