As part of the Engine Room Europe programme European Artist Residencies (EAR), Culture and Arts Projects NOASS (Riga, Latvia) invites visual artists to offer their ideas for the creation of art works in an urban environment. NOASS is looking for artists from all TEH Member centres and Friend organisations are invited to join the project. One of the artistic elements that should be used is water. The deadline for proposals is April 1st, 2012.

As part of the three-year European project Engine Room Europe, A-Team - Artists for Change will realise four creative processes in Sweden, Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovenia, teaming up artists, cultural managers and local mediators who will deal with local community issues. For this project, A-Team searches for artists working in any medium affiliated with TEH Member centres or Friend organisations who enjoy process, research and community-based work and interactive dialogue.

ufaFabrik (Berlin, Germany) presents Music Freedom Day 2012 under the title Hatua kwa Hatua (Step by Step). It will be held on Saturday, 3rd of March, 2012 at 20:00h. An evening will be dedicated to the artists and members of the Cambodian cultural centre Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPS), meaning “The Brightness of Art”.

From February 11th till March 18th, 2012 Röda Sten Art Centre (Göteborg, Sweden) will exhibit a selection of artistic proposals within the Platform #2 - On Notions of Space and Inherent Power Relations. Among the projects that will be presented are Obstruction, an installation by Gustav Hellberg, and Without/Within, a site specific performance by Flytande Galleriet.

The exhibition Permission for the Revolution (Attitudes toward weak censorships and their modes of operation) explores and debates about new forms of resistance by citizens in societies that call themselves or are nominated as democratic. The inauguration will be held at Off Limits (Madrid, Spain) on February 18th and the exposition will be available till March 16th, 2012. 

Sagra delle words (A Festival of Words) is a residential creative writing course which aims to challenge, inspire and transform your writing. The course will be led by Sheree Mack between 3-10th of June, 2012 and will be hosted by OZU (Monteleone, Sabina, Italy).

On December 10th, 2011, Izolyatsia (Donetsk, Ukraine) hosted the photographer Alexander Chekmenev (Kiev, Ukraine) who presented to the Donetsk audience his newly published monograph on life in Donbass. The photos were followed by explanations of the images’ origin and principle of choice. Alexander described the portrayed people, their work, struggle and way of living. 

The cultural centres Z-Bau (Nürnberg,Germany) and A4 - Zero Space (Bratislava, Slovakia), both TEH Members, got recently deprived from their venues. First, Kulturzentrum Z-Bau (Nürnberg,Germany) had to close in October 2011 after the City Council of Nürnberg took over the management of the centre’s building. Z-Bau’s team informed us about the details in a farewell letter which you can read here. In less than a month later, we received similar alarming news from A4 - Zero Space (Slovakia, Bratislava). After a selection procedure for a new manager of the venue, A4 was not elected to stay in the building. For this reason, tomorrow (December 22nd, 2011) there will be demonstrations in front of the Slovakian Ministry of Culture in Bratislava.

SPACES is a project, financed by the European Commission, in which TEH takes part as an associate partner, represented by TEH Ambassador Annette Wolfsberger. The project assembles artists and cultural workers in four Eastern partner countries, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, who aim at reflecting societal issues in the public realm of their city. It will take place from December 2011 to December 2013. To learn more about the project, TEH invited its project manager Ina Ivanceanu for an interview.

The Stockholm conference on the 9th of December was organised by Intercult (Stockholm, Sweden), Riksteatern and the European Commission (Sweden) and  presented prominent speakers such as the Culture Minister of Sweden Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth and Vladimír Šucha, Director of the Directorate-General for Education and Culture in the European Commission. 

During the past month, TEH was represented in Europe and the wider world by TEH Embassadors and the TEH Coordination Office. All four events were different in their scope and thematic although they all emphasized the importance of culture on both local and global level. To share the experience with you, we gathered the impressions that we received from the TEH representatives that were sent to present the network.

How to Disappear in Europe? is a project that brings 27 young European photographers, one from each EU-Member State, to portray an illegal person from their country as a hero. The project is organized in partnership with Melkweg (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) which will present the project´s three months long exhibition at the Melkweg Gallery. The project is currently looking for more European partners among other TEH Members.

The indie festival Mo'Fo’12 is celebrating 10 years of life and independence between 27-29 January 2012 in Mains d'Œuvres (Paris, France). It consists of 3 days of pop, folk, rock, experimental and electro, with more than 20 concerts, showcases, merchandising, public youth workshops, a re-broadcasting of the concerts on a giant screen, restaurant and bar. Mains d'Œuvres was also the host of a Latvian video art screening showed the recent tendencies of Latvian video art. It took place on Friday, November 25th, 2011 and was organized by Inga Lace from Latvia who is currently in EVS Volunteer at Mains d'Œuvres.

On December 11th, 2011, the photographer Aleksander Chekmenev (Kiev, Ukraine) presented at IZOLYATSIA his recently published monograph Donbass, which depicts the lives of coal-miners who work in illegal mines.

For reliable information on the Belarusian cultural reality.

On the October 6th, the European Commission published its proposals for the next generation of the EU Cohesion Policy 2014-2020. The documents cover proposals for Culture Action Europe’s campaign objective on the so-called structural funds, which account for around 35% of the EU budget and which have played a significant role in funding cultural projects in the past and current budget rounds.

Together with its neighbours and friends, Izolyatsia (Donetsk, Ukraine) is developing the Donetsk City Guide for a Japanese H