EFA Members in EFFEA - Generation 4
The European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists (EFFEA) enables the creation of new artistic platforms for emerging artists by bringing together international festivals and supporting their international breakthrough.
Eight EFA Members were involved in EFFEA Generation 4 as Leading and Partner festivals, playing a pivotal role in providing a creative space for artistic residencies and enabling the emerging artists of their choice to benefit from their rich network and expertise.
ReMusica Festival & Usedomer Musikfestival
The residency of Duo Ourika brings together cellists Clémence Mebsout and Valentin Hoffmann. On their residency, they explore the rich melodic landscapes of North African music to develop a new repertoire. Working alongside masters of the Oriental musical tradition, they combine composition and improvisation to explore new ways of performing, creating and sharing music.
The residency takes place in three phases: an initial spring session dedicated to artistic creation; a period of mentoring with an experienced coach; and a series of workshops and experiments in schools. These activities take place during residencies at Festival de Chaillol (France), ReMusica Festival (Kosovo) and Usedomer Musikfestival (Germany).
Wonderfeel & Valley of Arts
Dutch cellist and singer Hadewych van Gent and Dutch-Argentinian soprano Ana-Carmen Balestra come together for their EFFEA residency to create a distinctive musical programme. Having first met at high school, they create a project centred on voice, expression and storytelling, inspired by Ana-Carmen's Argentinian heritage.
The programme combines well-known songs with intimate classical works, creating a performance that connects naturally with audiences in open-air settings, where expressiveness is essential. Featuring a warm and rhythmic selection of South American and Spanish repertoire, specially arranged for voice, cello and guitar, the project is designed for outdoor performances at Istanbul Music Festival (Türkiye), Viva Musica! Festival (Slovakia), Valley of Arts (Hungary) and Wonderfeel (the Netherlands).
Another EFFEA residency involving Wonderfeel brings together dramaturge, audio producer and field recordist Katherina Lindekens with composer, sound artist and performer Inne Eysermans.
Their residency explores questions such as: how do landscapes recover after periods of human conflict? Once the final explosions and cries have faded, how does nature continue to live, heal and reinvent itself? These reflections form the basis of a series of immersive soundscapes created from field recordings made at sites across Belgium and Europe where the traces of past wars serve as powerful reminders not to take peace for granted.
Baroque music is woven into these soundscapes, creating a dialogue between past and present. The residency takes place at Wonderfeel (the Netherlands), York Early Music Festival (United Kingdom) and Bijloke Wonderland (Belgium).
SPRING Performing Arts Festival
SPRING Festival (the Netherlands), together with Actoral Festival (France) and Santarcangelo Festival (Italy), joins forces to support and promote the work of choreographer Harald Beharie by presenting his two latest creations, UNDERSANG and SWEET SPOT.
Harald Beharie's choreographic practice explores alternative ways of being, moving and existing together, while challenging established ideas of corporeality and identity. Working in the fertile space between clarity and uncertainty, he uses the body as a driving force for dramaturgy, treating it as a site of transformation through embodiment, movement and materiality.
Music Biennale Zagreb
Music Biennale Zagreb is involved in not one but two EFFEA residencies.
The first is the residency of Teresa Doblinger, Daniil Posazhennikov, Seulbin Roh and Thea Soti, collectively known as MBZ LAB. Led by Music Biennale Zagreb, the residency is developed in partnership with Fringify – Independent Arts Festival Hamburg (Germany) and 180° – Laboratory for Innovative Art Festival (Bulgaria).
MBZ LAB is an experimental project incubator that reimagines how Music Biennale Zagreb commissions and produces new work. Four international artists with interdisciplinary, sound-based practices collaborate on context-responsive projects through mentoring, peer exchange and an iterative creative process. Each residency supports the development of a work built around a strong, adaptable core concept that can be reinterpreted across different spaces, formats and disciplines.
The second residency features Polish percussionist Kasia Kadłubowska and takes place at DPP | Portimão Percussion Days (Portugal), Music Biennale Zagreb (Croatia) and Women Reclaiming the Arts (Greece).
Along with the Algarve Contemporary Percussion Group, Kasia Kadłubowska develops a residency that brings together musicians of different nationalities, genders and cultural backgrounds. The project aims to support and empower an emerging European female artist within the traditionally male-dominated field of contemporary percussion. Working closely with the resident ensemble at DPP, the residency explores Kasia's solo repertoire through free improvisation and sound exploration, while also co-creating new interpretations of Polish and Portuguese traditional music through the innovative practices of a contemporary percussion ensemble.
Dance Festival Malta
Another festival supporting two EFFEA residencies is Dance Festival Malta.
The first is the residency of Diane Portelli and Moveo Dance, Ashes 2 Ashes, for which Dance Festival Malta is the lead festival. This contemporary dance project explores diversity, resilience and our shared humanity through the metaphor of soil – the ground that connects us all.
The residency unfolds across four creative residencies and two performances in Slovenia (Na knap), Spain (Abril en Danza) and Italy (INTERPLAY). Throughout the project, four artists collaborate with minority communities, collecting voices, memories and stories that are transformed into movement and sound. By the end of the project, these experiences will be distilled into a final performance that embodies themes of resistance and release, fragmentation and unity. The work will premiere in Malta at Dance Festival Malta, the lead festival of the residency.
The second EFFEA residency involving Dance Festival Malta as a partner is Quebranto, a project by Portuguese choreographer Bruno Duarte.
Quebranto is a choreographic solo that reawakens gestures, rituals and superstitions inherited from a rural Portuguese childhood, translating them into a contemporary language through movement and sound. The work explores how belief, memory and energy inhabit the body and can be transformed into vibration. In dialogue with a vinyl turntable and a theremin, the performer creates a living field in which gesture becomes sound and sound becomes gesture.
Alongside Dance Festival Malta, the residency also takes place at Quinzena de Dança de Almada – International Dance Festival (Portugal), Abril en Danza (Spain), Šibenik Dance Festival (Croatia), Fagagna Dance Festival (Italy) and Derida Dance Fest (Bulgaria).
Fabula – Literature of the World Festival
For another year, Fabula - Literature of the World Festival (Slovenia) takes part in the EFFEA programme, this time supporting the residency of Georgian writer Temo Rekhviashvili in partnership with Wintertuin Festival (the Netherlands) and the Tbilisi International Festival of Literature (Georgia).
The residency aims to connect the writer with an international network of literary practitioners, translators, publishers, cultural professionals and readers. By fostering new professional relationships, the residency supports the participant's artistic and professional development, includes the translation of a selection of the writer's work into Dutch, and creates opportunities to engage with new audiences across Europe.
The European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists - EFFEA is an initiative of EFA, co-funded by the European Union, implemented in partnership with 14 EFFE Hubs:
Croatian Composers Society (Croatia), Culture Matters (Czechia), PLMF Arts Management (Estonia), France Festivals (France), Festival Friends (Germany), Stichting Caucasus Foundation (Georgia), Summa Artium Kultúra Támogató Nonprofit Kft. (Hungary), Association of Irish Festival Events (Ireland), ItaliaFestival (Italy), ARC Research and Consultancy Ltd. (Malta), Asociația Centrul Cultural Clujean (Romania), ArtLink (Serbia), Sweden Festivals (Sweden), and Development Centre "Democracy through Culture" (Ukraine).