Association "Sansusi" aims to support the development of contemporary arts in Latvia and to provide its availability both in the capital city Riga and rural area. The association is well-known for its festival of contemporary music and stage arts "Sansusi" every August in rural area of town Aknīste organized since 2014. Within three years it has proved itself not only as a unique event Selia region's cultural life but also as a serious alternative to traditional cultural developments in Latvian territory. Since 2015 Sansusī has initiated a cycle of concerts taking place in Aknīste, Riga, and its surroundings. These events provide high-quality art in regions, with particular emphasis on contemporary art and new creations accessible to young audiences. Sansusi regularly supports, co-produces and produces new creations in different contemporary art genres (The Trees' Opera, 2016, The Trees' Opera II 2018, Banuta 2020).

For more information see the Sansusi youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXWCLzKERaz9LkFSmTlRIYg/videos

Sansusī Wellbeing Residency Program: Open Call 15th Feb - 18th March, 2022
With the support of the Nordic Culture Point, Sansusi is providing an opportunity for socially engaged contemporary artists and art groups (up to 4 people, representing visual art, circus, dance, music, theatre, performance art, cross-genre etc.) who value exchange between artists and all groups of society both for their artistic development and for encouraging social change through art.

The program is welcoming artists eager to involve specific social groups during their creation period in residency. Those target groups are children and seniors from isolated rural areas, patients and staff of the Psychoneurological hospital of Aknīste and Social care center in Akniste. Socially engaged artists are asked to create a frame for the inclusion of at least one of the target groups and dedicate at least 8 h per week during the 1 month period to include them in artistic processes.

They are open to proposals for all phases of a project – residency may be used to explore a concept, to research artistic or technical feasibility, develop part of a project, bring a work to full production scale as long as the collaboration with wellbeing target groups can be mutually beneficial for both artists and the people involved.

Artists will have a personal assistant that will facilitate the communication with institutions and staff of social and health care institutions as well as help to solve logistic issues. The team can consult on artistic questions, project writing, and self-promotion as well as to help to reach out to local art institutions. Occasionally help with creating promotional materials (photo, video) can be provided.

Sansusi participated in 2021 in projects that were supported by i-Portunus, EU Mobility Scheme for artists and cultural professionals.