The G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation announces the open call for its third residency, inviting applications from Greek cultural professionals from various fields. The residency will host 8-10 fellows, is fully funded, and will take place between 20-27 October 2024, in Agios Nikolaos, Crete.

The G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation is a non-profit cultural organization. Our mission is to support and promote contemporary art and culture and to aid lifelong learning and the transmission of knowledge to future generations. Driven by our mission, and always striving to respond to the challenges cultural professionals face at each given time, our goal with the launch of the residency programme in 2022 was to create a unique experience by fostering the conditions for coexistence and movement.

The residency aspires to create a new platform for collective learning, discussion and experimentation. It is an intensive, week-long programme full of workshops led by invited guests, discussions, reflections, and on-site research. In bringing together ambitious cultural professionals, the residency aims to develop new networks of synergy and cooperation and provide access to multiple experiences. The residency culminates in an electronic and printed publication, presented in the summer of the following year.

Inspired by a theme which dominates contemporary international bibliography and permeates a lot of the Foundation’s recent activities and initiatives, the inaugural residency focused on Care: Economies of Eudaimonia, bringing together 9 fellows and 6 invited guests who discussed different notions of care and the absence of it. In 2023, the residency was part of CARE ECOLOGIES, a multifaceted international cooperation project. Asking questions like What could care possibly look like in the midst of a multidimensional crises? What would our economy and society look like if care were at the centre? Could care become the strongest means of connection with family and community? Can care be measured? Can it evolve into a means of well-being? the residency brought together 8 fellows and 6 guests who discussed expanded concepts of care, including consumerism and the commodification of care in contemporary markets, models of degrowth, localization, and sustainability, ethnography, culture, social impact, and systemic change, ecology, exclusion, self-care and the consequences of its absence.

This year, the residency continues under the umbrella of CARE ECOLOGIES, focusing on topics including culture, ecologies, and environmental responsibility, post-development theory, ethnographic methods and participant observation, knowledge extractivism and the intersection between the Anthropocene and the social history of AI. More information in CARE ECOLOGIES here and here.