Applications now open for new Western Armenian culture program

The Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has launched արդ եւս | in view—a new grant program dedicated to culture and creativity in the Western Armenian language. Through this new flagship initiative, the Department will support cultural production in Armenian, seeking to reinforce the intrinsic relationship between language and culture. Western Armenian will be the main vehicle of creation.

Culture and identity, especially in diasporan contexts, constantly evolve. Each generation creates its own culture, building on the achievements and aesthetics of the previous generations. The Foundation wishes to support this process of innovation, creation and identity (re)formulation by providing Armenian creatives the opportunity and the means to express themselves through any medium and in ways relevant to their current realities.

There is a pressing need for a strong and vibrant contemporary culture in Western Armenian. The most effective way to ensure the vitality of any endangered language is to generate new culture in it — a culture that is relevant to and created by younger generations. Armenian language and culture cannot remain in seclusion while we constantly witness paradigm shifts in global dynamics, technological innovation at breakneck speeds, fluid identities and environmental catastrophes. It is imperative that the language and culture constantly engage with the world in order to thrive, remain vibrant and relevant.

More specifically, the aim of the արդ եւս | in view program is to give creative minds the chance to develop contemporary cultural initiatives conceived and implemented in the Western Armenian language.

արդ եւս | in view encourages creative expressions of ideas, experiences, and emotions in a wide range of media, including the arts (visual, performing), interdisciplinary and hybrid forms of expression, literature, critical essays and graphic novels, videos, installations, animation, new music, creative broadcasting and any other form of cultural expression in Western Armenian.