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Donostia-San Sebastian.  On Friday March 30 the Etxepare Basque Institute published the call for grants destined to fund the Basque culture outside the territorial scope of the Basque language for the 2012 year.  The Institute began to administer these grants last year, since in 2010 they were still the responsibility of the Basque Government’s Directorate for the Promotion of Basque Culture.  The Institute carried out a period of reflection on the program that included meeting with cultural agents, from different areas, who had participated in them, aiming to improve and make the calls more effective.  The result of this process, are some changes to the program.

This year the grants are divided into two categories:

a) Aid for the diffusion of plastic and visual arts, music, and performing arts and literary works in 2012 to take place outside of the territorial scope of the Basque language (370,000 Euros).  Details, here.

b) Aid for the participation in fairs and professional festivals that will take place during 2012, again outside of the territorial scope of the Basque language (149,000 Euros). Details, here.

New deadlines

One of the changes that have taken place is the extension of application deadlines for these subsidies.  Grants can be applied for during two different periods: the first until the 30 of April, and the second from July 16-September 14 (in the case of extraordinary concerts until June 8).  These changes have been requested by the creators themselves, as explained by the Institute’s Director Aizpea Goenaga.

In this way, those applying that can’t present their project within the first deadline can do so by the second.  This change that will allow greater flexibility during application period will also increase the flexibility during grant management.  This will ensure that the call will be published within a maximum period of three months from the filing of the application.