A word from the artistic co-directors

As the artistic co-directors, we are honoured to have had the opportunity to work in close collaboration with The European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA) in the production of the NEU/NOW festival. This is an exciting new ‘virtual’ festival has been created in order to provide an innovative platform for talented graduating artists – currently emerging from Higher Arts Education Institutions and Universities across Europe – to present themselves to a wider international audience.

As members of the European academic community with a responsibility for the education and development of student artists, we both share a concern for ensuring that our graduates are given every opportunity to demonstrate their talents to the communities of professional practice that they aspire to join and, thereby, seek to establish a vital career foothold within the contemporary arts landscape. As the Bologna Process begins to firmly establish the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the European Union expands further, this ‘landscape’ increases significantly in both area and variety! This growth, in turn, presents our graduates with a new possibility (one that didn’t seem as attainable to our generation!) – to develop their artistic careers in a truly European context.

Although there are a developing number of artistically-based professional networks in place that link established designers, film makers, musicians, performers and visual artists – it is still relatively difficult for emerging artists to bring their work to the attention of the wider professional communities in these creative fields, let alone to international audiences (or markets!). The NEU/NOW Festival, as its name suggests, aims to present some of the most exciting and creative NEU artistic talent NOW emerging from across the European Higher Education Area in the frame of both an on-line ‘virtual’ festival and a ‘live’ festival which, this year, will take place in Vilnius – one of the European Capitals of Culture in 2009.

The Bologna process and the establishing of the European Higher Education Area, has significant implications for our curricula as well as for our graduates. It brings a new focus to the need to ensure that the processes and outcomes of higher education across Europe are broadly comparable. This is not to say that they shouldn’t be distinctive or reflect the specific needs of each region, but that they should actively promote the possibility of student mobility – offering students the opportunity to get the best of what Europe has to offer them in the development their individual talents and abilities. We believe that the NEU/NOW festival has a role to play here, so we have been careful to ensure that the work selected for the festival is drawn as broadly as possible from across the European Higher Education Area. Therefore, we as teachers, will have ready access to (virtual) examples of creative excellence produced by a range of arts academies and universities across Europe – and our students will be able to contextualise their own work within that produced by their European peers.

Whether you are a member of the public with an interest in the arts, a cultural operator with a professional interest in one or more of the arts disciplines represented in the festival, a teacher or a student working in one of the discipline fields, we sincerely hope that you find the work represented in the NEU/NOW Festival to be informing, interesting and inspiring!

Professor Anthony Dean,
Dean of Faculty of Arts,
University of Winchester

Paula Crabtree, Dean,
Department of Fine Art,
Bergen National Academy of the Arts

ELIA-European League of Institutes of the Arts
Beulingstraat 8
1017 BA Amsterdam
The Netherlands

http://www.elia-artschools.org

Ute Kohlmann
Project Manager

ute.kohlmann@elia-artschools.org

• ELIA. European League of Institutes of the Arts
• Vilnius European Capital of Culture
• Jotta
• European Commission