1. The Emergency Fund

The Board of Trustees of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has approved the financial support to be conceded to the national cultural agents after receiving their applications for the Covid-19 Emergency Fund (from 30 March to 6 April). More than 1500 cultural agents will be supported with a total of 1,5M Euros, which means an increase of 500K Euros in the value previously announced.

The emergency support will be attributed to artists and artistic production entities that have seen their projects cancelled in areas to which the Foundation commonly attributes support (such as Music, Dance, Theatre and Visual Arts) in the form of the partial subsidy of lost earnings, contributing towards meeting living costs.

The situation which Portuguese artists are living, with the sudden cancelling of their shows and exhibitions, justifies, for the President of the Foundation, “the unprecedented emergency intervention”. Isabel Mota emphasizes that “the Foundation would not be the same without the community of Portuguese artists with whom it has built relations of mutual trust throughout the years” and says “we will do everything within our reach to help them through this crisis”.

The selection of the applications was made through the verification of lost earnings but also bearing in mind the gender equality factor, regional distribution, and the situation of those whose professional activity has started recently. In every case, the conditions of eligibility were considered the same for both the artists and technicians involved.

In total, the support will be conceded to more than 1500 cultural agents in a global amount of 1,5M Euros attributed to individual agents (32,3% in the field of Music, 16,7% in the field of Dance, 30,9% in that of Theatre, 17,9% in that of Visual Arts and 2,2% in other areas) and to artistic structures (16% in the field of Music, 15,1% in the field of Dance, 37,8% in that of Theatre, 8,4% in that of Visual Arts and 22,7% in other areas).

2. Grants for New Creators

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has also announced the grant winners for New Creators in Cinema, Dance and Theatre, a programme that was open when the emergency started. More than 200K Euros will be attributed to 46 projects in the fields of Cinema, Dance and Theatre. Priority was given to those who are in the beginning of their career or that are starting a new line of intervention in their artistic path, as well as to those who are creating artistic approaches considered to be innovative.