The awardees 2021
The winners of The Power of the Arts 2021 have been announced! The jury selected four outstanding projects that implement unconventional artistic ideas for an open society.
The four awardee projects impressively exhibit the multifaceted nature of art and culture by re-interpreting artistic practice with courage and creativity, such as: hybrid digital concepts for cultural education at advanced ages; the creation of structures for the professionalization of artists with disabilities; and the exploration of beauty as a concept of culture to biographical cultural work at the intersection of virtual and real spaces.
“The arts have integrative, unifying, cross-cultural power and can make a significant contribution to social cohesion, especially in today’s world – we as a company believe that firmly,” says Claudia Oeking, Director External Affairs at Philip Morris GmbH. “For me personally, these awardees represent courageous role models for a contemporary life featuring art and culture, and illuminate how art and culture actively can accompany, shape, and catalyze social transformation processes. It is extremely gratifying for us to be able to contribute here via The Power of the Arts.”
The awardees at a glance:
ARTplus by EUCREA e.V. (Hamburg / nationwide)
In the German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia, ARTplus enables artistically talented people with disabilities to pursue professional training at cooperating academies for theater, art, and music. In doing so, this program is tackling the rigid structures of the cultural sector in order to promote inclusion in art and culture.
Spread more Beauty by GRAND BEAUTY, Interventionsbüro e.V. (Leipzig)
Spread more Beauty is opening a radically diverse beauty salon. Here, beauty and care experts with and without immigration backgrounds, autodidacts, and pros will be working together to create a venue and occasions for interlinking the forms of beauty across the boundaries of language and culture. Spread more Beauty is exploring what it is that constitutes beauty in a culture, and how beauty is written into a culture’s memory.
Der Garten der Erinnerungen (The Garden of Memories) Integrationshaus e.V. (Cologne)
In a participatory artistic process, residents of Cologne’s Kalk district are creating a shared virtual Der Garten der Erinnerungen (garden of memories).The project crafts space to recreate memories, render them accessible in virtual reality, and share them with others. War and persecution have made it impossible to travel to certain countries which play a central role in the personal histories of many people. This project addresses that aspect of German reality using artistic means to create a basis for new encounters in real life.
DanceOn60+hybrid, Kulturator | GUTE-DINGE-STIFTUNG (Munich)
DanceOn60+hybrid is an inclusive, hybrid dance project that initiates and digitally connects contemporary dance groups at facilities which work with senior-aged people. The project makes use of modern technology to enable older people with and without disabilities to participate in socio-cultural projects, placing a focus on sensory while addressing a highly topical issue – loneliness in old age.