The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

Outside the public sector, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation plays a decisive role in the national context, and develops various programmes with significant internationalization dimensions and with a strong national and international impact. The Gulbenkian Development Support Programme (cooperation with Official Portuguese-speaking African countries and East Timor), in its Art component, supported 13 multicultural projects in 2010, in order to contribute to the dissemination and promotion of artistic culture from official Portuguese speaking countries, in particular those involving training activities and actions developed in partnership with other leading national and international entities. In the framework of the Gulbenkian Artistic Creation Creativity Programme, 16 intensive advanced artistic training courses were organised, covering the areas of cinema, opera, theatre, choreography, fine arts, photography, 3D animation, performing arts and video-art, involving 178 students, foreign and national professors. The Programme has developed a support line for artists from CPLP countries in order to enable them to participate. Cooperation at the European level has a major impact, e.g. a major internationalization project, in the framework of the Culture Programme, involving participation by the Centro Cultural de Belém Foundation: “Prospero – Six cities, one project, the theatre in common”, an ambitious 5-year theatre project (2008/2012) involving six institutions that have joined forces to foster development of European artistic creation: Théâtre National de Bretagne (Rennes/França), Théâtre de la Place (Liège/Bélgica), Emilia Romana Theatre Fondazione (Modena/Itália), Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Berlim/Alemanha) and the CCB. Another important example is the Serralves Foundation, which since 2010, is a partner in the young persons exchange programme led by the TATE, entitled, “Turbinegeneration”. Also in the CCB, in addition to programming of shows by foreign companies, the CCB/Fábrica das Arts is one of the founders of the «Big Bang – European Children’s Music and Adventure Festival », which is a European music festival that combines speciality and artistic contributions from the partner countries. Also in terms of support for the mobility of artists, the Gulbenkian Performing Arts Programme, established in 2011, aims to promote the Portuguese artistic panorama in the areas of Cinema, Dance and Theatre by granting one-off support to projects from professional entities or structures, in the fields of artistic and technical professional enhancement, creativity and internationalization.