Visiting Tartu - Estonia's second largest city, which will become the European Capital of Culture in 2024

Tartu, Estonia's second largest city, will be the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) in 2024. Our programme manager Matěj Vlašánek attended the two-day Kultuurikompas forum in April, established cooperation for the ART FARM project and of course looked for inspiration for our other projects. The theme of this year's Kultuurikompas was "How Borderless is Culture" and it focused mainly on artist residencies and international cultural networks and platforms.

The ART FARM project is being developed as a part of Budweis's candidacy for the ECoC and aims to strategically support the relatively dense network of residential venues in the South Bohemian Region. Our wish is to make České Budějovice and the South Bohemian Region one of the most attractive European residency regions for international artists by 2028. 

Tartu presented both residency projects located in the wilderness with a focus on sustainability, transforming industrial spaces into residencies and studios, as well as, for example, New York City Hall projects, where different departments invite curators and artists for residencies to help them address some of the city's social, educational or environmental problems through artistic research with local communities. 

As well as being a European Capital of Culture, Tartu is also a UNESCO City of Literature. Thus, an important topic during Matěj's meeting with the Tartu 2024 team was the possible cooperation and exchange of experiences between Tartu and the South Bohemian literary projects Literatura Žije, Šumava Litera, Tabook Illustrated or the hot new literary project Poezie Je from Tábor.