With the 10th anniversary of the Award, we take a journey across the continent: From the cultural traditions of local communities in Poland to the field of experimental new media and architectural research operating from the capital of England.

We celebrate courageous citizens: Those rethinking and reframing how culture can bring about positive social change.

Both laureates have been recognised for their outstanding work addressing urgent contemporary challenges through a cultural lens. Their work shows us that we need to create generous and daring cultural concepts based on humanity, inclusion and empathy in order to generate a culture of coexistence in Europe.Both Borderland and Forensic Architecture see art as a way of exposing injustice in our communities, to help us recover and rethink the past in order to change the world. They also teach us the importance of working critically with memory and tangible matter to create a common story and means to be able to tell history in new and different ways.

The award will be presented at the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and includes a sum of € 25.000 per laureate.

ECF is the founder of the Princess Margriet Award for Culture, an annual award for cultural change makers in Europe, established in 2008. The Award honors inspiring examples of people and organizations who dare—through various modes of cultural expression and discourse—to imagine and enact a more inclusive, shared European space. Among previous laureates are: John Akomfrah (a British artist, writer and film director of Ghanaian descent), Borka Pavićević (a Serbian dramaturge and cultural activist, founder of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination), Asli Erdogan (Turkish writer and journalist), Kretakor ( a Hungarian centre for contemporary arts which creates creative community games), Visual Culture Research Center ( Ukrainian institution serving as a platform for collaboration between academics, artists and activists), Teatro Valle Occupato (an Italian theater group that began an occupation strike to prevent the privatization of the old theater in Rome, later socialized the space, starting its artistic and social activity on a new basis - cooperation between employees and viewers), Luc Mishalle (saxophonist and composer, artistic director of MET-X - a house of music makers in Brussels), Stuart Hall (a Jamaican-born cultural theorist, political activist and sociologist ) and Navid Kermani (German writer and Orientalist).

The 2018 edition of the Award – with its theme ‘Courageous Citizens’- ECF sought to highlight and celebrate those remarkable and courageous agents of cultural change who inspire us to create lasting social alternatives based on an inclusive vision of Europe.

The independent, international jury, whose meeting took place at ECF in Amsterdam 8–9 January, chose The Borderland and Forensic Architecture as the two laureates of this year’s ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture. Both organizations were selected for their determination in addressing—albeit on different scales and with different approaches— urgent contemporary challenges. Borderland has been selected for bringing the arts of many cultures that have tragically disappeared from a rural community back to the community and is giving this cultural expression new life through young generations. Over the 28 years since it was founded, Borderland has become a lively cultural agora, archive and reflection space thriving within the complex, conflicted history and diversity of Sejny, Poland —a“borderland” of the EU. Forensic Architecture has been selected for bringing, from within the field of experimental architecture, scientific and artistic disciplines together in ground-breaking media research and creation; reaching out to other fields of art, scholarship, law, anthropology to courageously seek truth in a post-truth world. 

The two laureates underscore the depth and urgent need to create new cultural forms and arenas based on humanity, inclusion and empathy. Though vastly different in their methods and the contexts within which they work, they both deal with the most minute, everyday details in a way that collects and builds knowledge across communities and between people and institutions. Both make the intangible visible and give voice to those not heard.

The laureates will receive the prize presented by former president of the ECF Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands as part of the Award ceremony held on Tuesday 16 May 2018 at the Stadsschouwburg theatre in Amsterdam. The ceremony will be preceded by a 24-hour advocacy retreat on Monday 15 May gathering around 100 people from ECF networks and beyond to work collaboratively on cultural answers to pressing challenges Europe is facing today; challenges that result in accelerated polarization and isolation of many. Under three main thematic clusters – Systemic Change Alternatives, Shrinking space for Civil Society, Diversity & Equality.

As part of preparations for the ceremony, the team of the European Cultural Foundation will visit the International Center for Dialogue in Krasnogruda. A short film presenting the activity of Borderland will also be created.

European Cultural Foundation