Pro Helvetia's Fields of Activity
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Cultural Promotion In Switzerland - The Players
Pro Helvetia’s Fields of Activity
Visual Arts
The Arts Council maintains advisory and mediational links with museums, galleries and cultural centres throughout the world. It regularly initiates touring exhibitions and supports events connected with a host of different forms of artistic expression in the areas of the fine and applied arts, New Media, architecture and folk art. Although the Arts Council’s activities cover all periods of art history, the focus is on contemporary art. The image of Switzerland conveyed by Pro Helvetia is timely, challenging and often critical. By application, the Council supports exhibitions and the exchange of specialists at home and abroad, and provides funding for art publications and periodicals.
Music
In the music field Pro Helvetia supports world premieres and first performances of Swiss music with supraregional impact. It promotes performances beneficial to cultural exchange between regions and cultures, and helps establish links between concert promoters. Pro Helvetia regularly awards composition and project commissions in all musical genres.
Outside Switzerland Pro Helvetia supports concert tours by soloists and ensembles from Switzerland, but also master classes, seminars and lectures.
The department concentrates on supporting artists from Switzerland who can make significant contributions to musical development and on events relevant to that development.
Literature and the Humanities
Fostering understanding among Switzerland’s linguistic regions is one of Pro Helvetia’s key concerns. The Arts Council therefore places particular emphasis on promoting translation and on supporting Swiss and foreign events designed to encourage encounter.
Every year it commissions works from Swiss and Swiss-based foreign authors; it also extends support to translators, in acknowledgement of their contribution as cultural mediators. Publications about Swiss culture are eligible for grants; literary and cultural magazines receive continual support.
Outside Switzerland, Pro Helvetia distributes books to libraries and cultural institutions open to the public. It awards grants for literary events, the defrayal of authors’ travelling expenses, and participation in literary and humanities conferences in cooperation with foreign organisers.
Theatre
In the Theatre sector, Pro Helvetia focuses on independent professional productions, supporting both their development and dissemination (tours and festivals at home and abroad) with the aim of enabling them to be internationally competitive. This can be achieved only if ensembles have the opportunity to network with strong event organisers. The scope for support to ensembles of subsidised theatres is limited to grants for important guest performances abroad.
In its work outside Switzerland, Pro Helvetia places particular emphasis on cooperation with its eight foreign liaison offices.
Dance
In the Dance sector, Pro Helvetia aims to support and showcase Swiss choreographic work in all its variety. Placing the accent on independent professional productions, the Council is particularly interested in seeing this work blossom at a supraregional level and helping it to become internationally competitive. To this end, the Council awards grants for tours and important performances at home and abroad. Pro Helvetia also contributes to the international presence of Swiss ballet ensembles and cooperates with event organisers and festivals committed to raising public awareness, disseminating works and encouraging intercultural dialogue.
In the national context Pro Helvetia is one of the partners, alongside the Federal Office of Culture, the cantons and the cities, dedicated to realising “Project Dance”. The programme is designed to improve working conditions for Swiss dance, foster choreographic work, further the forms and aesthetics of dance, and intensify the dissemination of works.
Culture & Society
Pro Helvetia addresses timely issues with a cultural component. The accent is on fostering domestic understanding and intercultural dialogue. In the field of Culture & Society, Pro Helvetia focuses on the role of art and culture as part of the social process. It supports activities that encourage exchange, the transfer of experience and the building of bridges, and projects that use cultural and artistic means to advance public discussion of timely cultural topics.
In the areas of cultural mediation, everyday and folk culture, and intercultural dialogue, Pro Helvetia provides financial support for pilot projects by application, but also initiates projects in close cooperation with other cultural institutions.
Because of its particular concern for active popular participation in cultural processes, Pro Helvetia - via Culturemobile, its travelling animation workshop - supports initiatives focusing on the cultural practices of diverse ethnic groups.
International coordination
Pro Helvetia is intent on providing Swiss arts professionals with the best possible conditions for the creation and dissemination of artistic products in an international context, and on helping Switzerland acquire a convincing international image in keeping with its potential. The Arts Council serves as an intermediary, offering advice, coordination and information, facilitating contacts and providing on-the-spot representation.
For this purpose Pro Helvetia maintains foreign liaison offices, which promote collaboration and dialogue between Swiss and foreign artists, promoters and organisations. Projects in all areas of the arts, whether literature, theatre, dance, music or the visual arts, are realised - in Cape Town, Cairo, Budapest, Bratislava, Prague and Cracow - in cooperation with local partners or - in Paris and Milan - in the context of the Arts Council’s own infrastructure.
The accent is on the development of a network of lasting relationships between Swiss and foreign arts professionals, and cultural venues and institutions; coordination with federal agencies, particularly Präsenz Schweiz and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, form an integral part of this approach. Support is extended to projects with more than short-term potential: projects geared to long-term, mutually fruitful cultural exchange.
Swiss Cultural Programme South-East Europe and Ukraine (SCP)
The SCP is a mandate tasked to Pro Helvetia by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Local offices are maintained in six countries of South-East Europe (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro), in the Ukraine and in Kosovo.
The SCP reflects the conviction that culture plays a key role in processes of social change. It promotes local partner organisations and cultural practitioners committed to fostering the diversity, independence and vitality of cultural life. This is achieved, on the one hand, via project-specific grants for activities undertaken by local cultural practitioners and, on the other, through medium-term cooperation projects aimed at building and strengthening cultural organisations and institutions.
Film
Pro Helvetia promotes the Swiss cinema under the auspices of SWISS FILMS, a partnership between the Swiss Film Centre, the Swiss Short Film Agency and Pro Helvetia.
The primary activities of SWISS FILMS include dissemination of Swiss film work abroad, promotion of the image of the Swiss cinema at home, short film distribution, provision of information on the latest developments in the Swiss cinema, compilation of important data concerning Swiss films and maintenance of a stock of copies.
The staff of the Swiss Film Centre, the Swiss Short Film Agency and the Pro Helvetia Film Service can now be reached at the Zurich and Geneva offices of SWISS FILMS.
SWISS FILMS
Neugasse 6, Postfach, CH-8031 Zurich
Tel. ++ 41 43 211 40 50 Fax ++ 41 43 211 40 60
E-mail: info@swissfilms.ch
SWISS FILMS Antenne Romande
48 avenue de la Praille, CH-1227 Carouge
Tel. ++ 41 22 308 12 40 Fax ++ 41 22 308 12 41
E-mail: geneva@swissfilms.ch
Further information
- www.swissfilms.ch
- Detailed information on the new organisation www.swissfilms.ch/download/news_2004.pdf
- Guide for Applicants
