Between April 2023 and July 2024, something quietly radical happened. EFFEA Call #2 unfolded as a Europe-wide framework that empowered 170 festivals to co-create residencies with 49 emerging artists or collectives over twelve months. In a world that often moves too quickly to notice the emerging, EFFEA Call #2 turned our attention to a coordinated act of care and mutual trust: a network of festivals across the continent joining forces to support those emerging—on their own terms, on international stages, reaching new local and global audiences.
A year of discovery
The second edition of the European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists (EFFEA) supported 49 artists or collectives—a total of approximately 110 emerging artists— under the wings of 170 festivals across 36 countries and 14 artistic disciplines. Between September 2023 and August 2024, more than 300 events, from performances to workshops and masterclasses, took shape.
But numbers only tell part of the story. EFFEA exists precisely where conventional support structures tend to falter: where artists are too new, too "risky" for traditional programming, unfamiliar to audiences. Where festivals long to collaborate but lack the means. Where emerging voices need time and space to grow, the network. That is where this fund enters and projects festivals as soft entry points into a European conversation.
EFFEA is an initiative of the European Festivals Association (EFA) that connects emerging artists—defined not by age or formal training, but by their potential to break through internationally—with festivals willing to take a chance. The fund enables artistic residencies, co-produced by a leading festival and at least two partners from different countries, offering time, space, and resources to develop new or existing work. It asks festivals to act not as gatekeepers but as collaborators, moving from selecting to co-creating the artistic process, allowing the incubation of new ideas, research, learning and exchange.
The project does not impose a form or format for EFFEA Residencies but rather facilitates the conditions in which festivals can co-produce residencies according to their own artistic and logistical realities. No two residencies were the same in terms of timelines, reach and outputs, yet all spoke a language of collaboration, co-authorship, connection. The residencies supported through Call #2 will remain visible through EFFEA’s website, EFA’s YouTube channel, and the collection of EFFEA Stories, where festivals and artists share their process in their own voices.
The geographical distribution of leading festivals in this second round was notably balanced—spanning north, south, east, and west Europe. Interestingly, the artists selected tended to come more frequently from Eastern countries, revealing an implicit corrective to long-standing patterns of visibility in European cultural funding. Thematically, the residencies distributed their focus across several key concerns: Fair remuneration and working conditions, new power relations, and meaningful planning. These themes were negotiated within the daily realities of each project and revisited at key moments of exchange.
As in the previous edition, the EFFEA Duty of Care Protocol was updated to reflect the new experiences and priorities that emerged from this second generation of residencies. The Protocol presents conclusions, practical tools and critical provocations for future work. The EFFEA Duty of Care Protocol Generation #2 is available for download:
Duty of Care Protocol Generation #2
The ripple effect of these collaborations is, by nature, impossible to fully grasp. But traces are everywhere: in renewed partnerships, in rethought curation models, in artists with more tools and more confidence to move in the international field.
A Brief Timeline
- March 2023: First whispers—a second call was coming.
- April –June 2023: Application phase. The open call announcement was made online and at the Arts Festival Summit 2023 in Girona, Spain. A dynamic interplay of initiatives unfolded: artists contacted festivals, festivals built new consortia, and networks stretched across linguistic, aesthetic and institutional divides. Throughout the open call period, the EFA team organised nine EFFEA Info & Networking sessions to facilitate connections and collaborations between festivals and artists. Meetings were also organised by some of the 14 EFFEA Platform Members and Creative Europe Desks, including in Sweden, Malta, France, and Serbia. EFFEA was also presented at different industry events such as Womex, BIME Pro, Berlin Conference, ETC International Theatre Conference, IETM Caravan meeting in Kosovo, and others. Around 420 festivals registered their editions on FestivalFinder.eu during the open call period.
- August 2023: Selected festivals and artists were announced.
- September 2023: The cohort gathered online for the Intake Seminar on 12 September marking the official launch of the implementation phase.
- July 2024: Eleven months later, the cycle closed with the Outtake Seminar on 9 July, a moment to reflect and articulate what had been learned.
A Note to the Artists and Festivals of Call #2
To those who lived this journey: thank you. Whether you were the host or the guest, the guide or the explorer, you helped map new territory for emerging voices in Europe’s cultural fabric. It was a special moment. A generation. A shared breath.
