Mimeta is now designing a financial response mechanism to the pressures COVID-19 puts on established organizations, platforms and performers within arts and culture. In 2020 we will hopefully be able to provide organizational support to our established partners in MENA and Africa South of Sahara so that they will be able to continue their efforts on behalf of the local arts- and culture sectors.
However, a major part of their latest proposals shows us a need for urgent support of art platforms and artists to enable livelihood and continuity. Mimeta will therefore ask our partners to manage the disbursement of smaller funds toward their constituencies, preferably in partnerships with other leading culture sector development organizations in their geography. Again - this is wat we hope we will be able to support.
In our view we don’t need to launch any innovative approach, as “use this time to develop distant learning and video-concerts”, as this already happens all over the globe, but we are open for proposals - as long as it is a substantially new way to give marginalized people their right bound access to arts and culture.
Initiatives:
The Abbara program aims to support and empower independent cultural and artistic initiatives and organizations from the Arab region. In this framework, the program is now offering exceptional financial support to cover basic organizational expenses (administrative staff salaries, rental payments, running costs, etc.) to help organizations adjust to the current circumstances and survive at this time of rapid change.
FOLLOW THIS LINK
Art Lives: Emergency Initiative to Support Arab Arts Practitioners. FOLLOW THIS LINK
The African Culture Fund (ACF) launches the Solidarity Fund for Artists and Cultural Organizations in Africa (SOFACO) in order to support the resilience of African artists and cultural actors whose activities have been negatively affected by the COVID-19 crisis. FOLLOW THIS LINK
Culture Resource and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) embarked on their first collaboration to try and address some of the pressing needs facing the arts and culture sector in Lebanon, at a time when the country is in the throes of social and political upheaval due to nation-wide economic collapse that is having serious repercussions on daily life. FOLLOW THIS LINK
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought all artistic and cultural life outside cyberspace to a halt. It is impossible to foresee, as of yet, how long this will last and what impacts it will have on artistic and cultural practices. The suspension of cultural and artistic activities combined with the economic fallout of the pandemic has compounded the pressures on workers in the arts and culture sector. This is all the more the case in Arab countries which lack cultural policies and governmental and communal structures that support this sector. These grants target artists and writers in the Arab region involved in the production of individual or collaborative artistic or literary projects. FOLLOW THIS LINK
In response to the global health crisis, particularly affecting the cultural sector, Africalia supports artists in their creative dynamics by setting up the "Creativity is life" grants. FOLLOW THIS LINK
