7th International Summer Campus at Künstlerstadt Kalbe

The Künstlerstadt Kalbe is a young and innovative cultural project, located in northern Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. It has made it its task to counter demographic change with art and cultural offerings. Their goal is on the one hand to understand the luxury of emptiness as a potential creative space and to use it for art and culture, social innovation and a new good life. On the other hand, this offer should revitalize Kalbe as well as the entire Altmark region, enable people to move in and create perspectives for staying. They see themselves as a social sculpture. Everyone can get involved and help shape the artists' city. The overriding goal is therefore to awaken and promote the creative potential on site through art and cultural offerings, and to create spaces to realize this potential. They began their work with this concern in 2013, andreceived many awards for it and have already received support from renowned foundations such as the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Swiss Drosos Foundation.

7th International Summer Campus 2019: The core piece of their work is the annual summer campus: over 50 days students of all artistic directions (fine arts, literature, drama, music, film, photography, media art, performance, interdisciplinary projects) are invited to live and work in Kalbe. For the first time, the 7th International Summer Campus 2019 will be of a special kind: the Künstlerstadt Kalbe with its social and creative approaches understands itself in the Bauhaus tradition, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2019. On this basis, the organizers would like to set a particularly clear sign for the cosmopolitanism and colorfulness of Saxony-Anhalt. Artists from the partner regions of Saxony-Anhalt (Mazovia Province in Poland and Centre-Val de Loire in France) are invited to come to Kalbe. All other nations are also very welcome. In accordance with this request, they hope that the scholarship holders of the summer campus will see themselves as participants in their social sculpture: in addition to working on their own projects (or in connection with them), they can interact with the city of Kalbe and its inhabitants through participative/interactive art actions or workshops, for example. In addition, the scholarship holders present the works they have created or brought with them to the public during weekly studio tours.

For all scholarship holders accommodation and work rooms are available free of charge. Some of the workrooms have been unused for several years and are of importance for the history of the city, such as the former court building in Kalbe. They offer unusual and unique opportunities for artistic production. This is exactly what they call the "luxury of emptiness": the rooms offer up to 70 square meters of space for the development of one's own creativity and at the same time represent a profitable challenge. In contrast to the often uniform working spaces in university cities, the rooms in the artists' city are often still unformed, but this provides an atmospheric and stimulating working environment. Performance spaces for readings, concerts, performances or screenings are already available, as are a basic stock of working materials, tools and technical equipment; further enquiries from the scholarship holders can be made individually.

For applicants living outside Germany, the organizers can pay a travel allowance. Furniture and crockery will be provided and cooking will take place in a large shared kitchen. Each scholarship holder will be provided with a local partner as contact person. A wide-ranging supporting program with idea workshops, cycle tours or joint intercultural dinners offers the opportunity to get to know the city, the countryside and its history and to contribute one's own visions for regional development. The organizers are in the process of applying for funding so that they can subsidize food, materials and travel costs for all students. At present, these costs have to be borne by the students themselves.

Interested students and artists can apply until June 1st 2019. The applicants themselves choose the time and duration (two to four weeks) of their stay during the summer campus (22.07.-08.09.). Arrival + departure is only possible on Mondays, except at the end of the campus, where the scholarship holders leave on Sunday. The dates of arrival and departure must therefore be indicated on the application form.
The required application documents include the completed application form, a curriculum vitae, a portfolio with a maximum of 10 proofs of work (no originals!) and a copy of the current certificate of enrolment and a letter of recommendation from a professor (if still a student). Applicants living in Germany send their application by post to the following address: Künstlerstadt Kalbe e.V.; Gerichtstraße 26A; 39624 Kalbe (Milde). Applicants who live outside Germany can submit their application online: [email protected].