City to City 2021: PLAY!

After a successful first edition, UNESCO Creative Cities of Media Arts are launching a worldwide open call for professional and emerging artists and artists teams. In this way, we want to mark our commitment to the importance of cooperation and support art and creativity as major forces for sustainable development in these times of uncertainty. Thanks to this initiative, we will bring together artists from around the world to collaborate in teams on a digital art project for three months.

While in the project’s first edition, the final artworks were united by the theme of Human Responsibility, this year the artists will focus on the theme of PLAY! Their task is to address the following questions:

• Can technology (e.g., AI in art) help us build a more sustainable and collective future?
• Can we use our creative talents to help rebuild our cities, relationships, and communities, but better than before?
• The COVID-19 crisis has significantly changed how we live, work, perceive art and cultural heritage. What are ideas or concepts can help us responsibly shape the future?
• Can we imagine a fairer, more sustainable future?
• Can we use our technologies to help us learn to play again?
• What will happen when we press Play?

The goal of the City to City project is to encourage artists to work collaboratively, yet online, on a project related to the theme. The artists will be teamed up during a mediation process at City to City LAB sessions, which coaches-curators will lead from participating cities. These events are designed to provide selected participants with a deeper understanding of the theme, present ideas, introduce them, and allow them to choose a partner to collaborate with.

The project relies on several core values, including intercultural collaboration, artistic/city diversity, innovation, solidarity, knowledge transfer, and experience sharing.

Each successful applicant will receive a scholarship of € 2,000 to create a digital piece in a team between September and November 2021. The results of residencies will be shared on digital platforms and presented during festivals in the UNESCO Creative Cities of Media Arts.

• Application deadline: June 30^th
• Evaluation and selection:  July 1^st to 16^th
• Artists acceptance: by July 19^th
• Announcement of selections: July 22^th
• C2C LAB 1(Kick-off meeting): August 3^rd, 3 PM CET (duration: 2h)
• C2C LAB 2: August 10^th, 3 PM CET (duration: 2h)
• C2C LAB 3: August 17^th, 3 PM CET (duration: 2h)
• C2C LAB 4: August 24^th, 3 PM CET duration: 2h)
• Residency: September 1^st – November 22^nd 2021
• Presentation of the final works: until October 2022

The call is open to professional artists, groups, and creatives in one of the Creative Cities of Media Arts (e.g. their place of birth, employment, etc.) – Austin (USA), Braga (Portugal), Calí (Colombia), Changsha (China), Dakar (Senegal), Enghien-Les-Bains (France), Guadalajara (Mexico), Gwangju (South Korea), Karlsruhe (Germany), Sapporo (Japan), Toronto (Canada), Viborg (Denmark), York (United Kingdom), and Košice (Slovakia).

The project is supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.