expression of interest for projects & ideas
Victoria 2031 Għawdex, European Capital of Culture Candidate City for 2031, is launching an expression of interest inviting individual artists, creative practitioners, transdisciplinary practitioners, informal collectives and groups, businesses, and non-governmental organisations to submit project proposals.
The European Capital of Culture initiative seeks to highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe, while fostering sustainable cultural development, international cooperation, and citizen engagement. We are particularly interested in the following themes, subjects and areas of thought, while remaining open to a wide range of interpretations and proposals beyond these directions:
Care: Gozo, at present and historically, as a cradle of physical, mental and spiritual health. This theme focuses on practices of wellbeing, care, gastronomy, agricultural practices and inter-generational connection.
Treasure: This theme focuses on the land and sea we inhabit: the natural, cosmic and magnetic energy that makes Gozo so much greater than the sum of its parts. Gozo as an osmosis of human and non-human life forces. We welcome projects that reflect on tides, horizons, climate change, and the many ways by which communities today respond to shifting climatic conditions and the threatened integrity of our ecosystems.
The Day After: A forward-looking, future-gazing theme that explores modes of deep listening and sensory awareness across human, non-human and other-than-human worlds. It invites the use of technology, innovation and new media as research tools in the exploration of our interactions with AI, and to elicit sustainable ways of mediating the challenges presented by the increasingly complex encounter between technology and the natural world. It embraces all facets of digital communication, including social platforms, to present new ways of creating and interacting with our immediate surroundings.
Invisibility: This theme invites projects that address dialogue as well as social and inter-communal tensions, and the negotiation of social realities, challenges and prospects. Artists are encouraged to engage critically and freely with notions of power, equity, identity, migration, seclusion and borders, and the interplay of anxiety and intimacy that often shapes societies.
Play: This theme celebrates play as a form of recreation and participation, as a mode of collective creativity and a practice of resistance and response. Projects are expected to invite audiences to take an active role in experimenting, performing and play, transforming cultural experiences into shared acts of imagination.