PLACCC Festival – organised in Budapest, Hungary since 2008 on a yearly basis – focuses on art in public space and site-specific art, and put special emphasis on the collaborative, research- and residency-based work with the invited artists. Another distinctive feature of our projects is that we encourage artists to connect with the local context and people throughout their site- and (preferably) context-specific creation processes.

Capitalising on our experiences and expertise in mentoring and accompanying local and international artists, gained while preparing the adaptation and the presentation of their projects at our festival, we have launched our Placcc Residency program.

Our motivations are three-dimensional: besides answering the needs and intentions of the participating artists, we also aim at nourishing our local context and our organisation.

Thus, we aim at

• providing opportunity for artists to develop their projects,
• fulfilling the local need for the international “presence” of art in public space,   
• sharing our experiences gained while collaborating with artists.

• We believe that we can help and support the creative process of artistic projects in an early phase or at a turning point, by mobilising our professional experiences as well as a local network of experts, by offering useful case studies and exchanges of relevant experiences.
  Thanks to our membership in different international networks, participating artists might also be able to benefit of these connections.

• Over the years while having organised the consecutive editions of Placcc Festival, we have gradually developed (and keep developing) a collaborative work method which we follow when we prepare the presentations of the invited and commissioned artists’ projects. At the core of this method lies a preliminary inquiry about the artists’ needs and interests which would help the implementation of a new project or the local adaptation of an existing one. Then we endeavour to organise the local creation or adaptation period for the artists according to their demands.
  After having worked with artists this way for couple of years, we intend to use this method in a less “product-oriented” way in the frame of our residency program.

• Besides supporting artists participating at our residency program, we hope to contribute also to the local art scene with our initiative – thus we seek to collaborate with artists in residency who are open to step into a mutual sharing with the local scene.
  Art in public space is practiced only sporadically in Hungary and there is no (formal or informal) education targeting the field. Furthermore, as autonomous high education (also of arts) is in severe danger in Hungary, alternative learning opportunities are more and more needed.
  Other artists and art students would be the primary beneficiaries of an open residency program, but we would obviously target also a wider audience / public with the participating artists’ contributions.

We set four cornerstones for our residency program (which also constitute the basis of our curatorial work in the festival, as our residency program is conceived to be a complementary activity to our festival):

– tailor-made work plan and activities,
– creation in public space and / or site-specifically,
– active connection with the local context,
– interdisciplinarity.

The most important feature and aim of our residency program is to design utterly personalised, tailor-made work plans to and with the participating artists. This is a method what we have tried and developed over the years, and it proved to be a highly efficient way of working on a project in an early phase or at a turning point.
The organisers provide active help in planning and realising the residency program. We don’t work by patterns, but plan and design every residency individually together with the artists, based in his / her / their needs and interests. We prefer defining this method as “accompanying the artist” instead of “mentoring”.
The residency program takes place in an urban / metropolitan environment (in Budapest, capital of Hungary). Just like in case of our festival, we warmly welcome if participating artists decide creating in public space, but they might just as well choose any unconventional location. We encourage artists to choose the location of their artistic creation, research and working process themselves – we provide preliminary information on the possible areas and sites beforehand, and help organising meetings, field trips etc. in order to help them establish a deeper connection with the chosen location and context.
We highly support interdisciplinary approaches – connections with both other art genres than the artists’ own, and / or other, non-artistic fields.
Just like when we curate the yearly Placcc Festival and our smaller scale projects throughout the year, we strive to explore what role art (in public space) can play in a wider (urban) context, how we can establish mutual and fruitful relationship with other disciplines like (among others but not limited to) urbanism, city planning or environmental protection.

The context of the residency program is strongly defined by our geographical and political situation: we are based and operate in Eastern-Central Europe, in a country with a large democracy deficit – in turn (and consequently) with a strong and vivid independent cultural and civil scene aiming at protecting the autonomy of art under the current authoritarian regime. The politically oppressed state of the civil sector and the cultural field (for almost 15 years) resulted in the gradual development of a certain informal network of like-minded independent cultural and civil organisations country-wide, but especially in Budapest.

Collaboration is a keyword of our work – not just with other cultural organisations, but also with cross- sectorial partners, before all from the fields of urbanism and environmental sector. We find it extremely inspiring to consult with professionals from other fields in the frame of the artistic creation – thus our organisation has established strong connections with a significant pool of professionals over the years.
Placcc Festival – mostly as a consequence of our focus on art in public space and its urban context – operates “nomadically”, without a space, a building or studios. Since 2022 we co-run a small cultural-community space with local artists in a mixed district of Budapest – at the same time we can also rely on the network of our partners with venues. Our community hub serves as the main “base camp” for the residencies (even though we encourage the artists to create in public space and site-specifically), on the other hand we can also provide working space for artists in residency at our partners’ places, and by this we also aim to enhance their connection with the local context and the embedment of the creation process.
Beside the ultimate goal of supporting and accompanying artists through a certain phase of their creative process our residency program follows a discernible professional agenda and we also strongly connect to more global values, and we strive to advocate free artistic expression, equality and diversity with our residency program.

– How do we enable and support the creative process?
Our residency program is essentially not meant for artists who seek isolation, tranquillity and lone creation, but for artists who want to discuss, find answers, see good practices, learn from collaborations, and who are open to share and contribute.
We offer active help for the artists by providing opportunities for personalised consultations with experts and peer artists, learning situations, meetings and encounters, as well as international connections to our artists in residency.
We ask them to be open to meet, interact and – occasionally – collaborate with local residents, and also with artists and students. The latter might contribute to their residency program as helpers, colleagues, even critiques, at the same time a collaboration can be a useful learning opportunity for them as well.
We offer a process-based residency program, still we ask a tangible outcome at the end. It can be, but shouldn’t necessarily be a ready artwork (be it performative or installative), it can just as well be a workshop, a walk, a discussion, a work-in-progress presentation etc.

– What professional and personal development opportunities do we provide?
We believe that our tailor-made residency program has the potential to boost the artistic development of a project as it is able to directly address questions and issues which are crucial for the creative process. We will put the participants in contact with outstanding professionals and experts with whom they can discuss their questions. At the same time, the program also gives space for the artists to contemplate and digest the outcomes of the personalised encounters, consultations, visits etc.
Our festival has established a wide international network over the years which may be available also for the artists in residency. Furthermore, the participants will have the opportunity for networking with local experts and artists with serious international connections.

– How do we support artists to achieve intercultural dimensions and find or strengthen interdisciplinary approaches?
We intend to design our program in that way that a highly diverse pool of artists could participate at it, meet each other and interact with each other: we welcome artists from all artistic fields (as long as they work in public space and / or site-specifically), both emerging and established artists as well as art students.
Participants will have the possibility to encounter not just with international and local artists, but also professionals from non-artistic fields, and we encourage them to engage with the local context. Our intention to offer them a working space at one of our partners (whose activities are relevant for the participants) is also part of our endeavour to build an intercultural and inter- / cross-disciplinary residency program.

– How do we help artists to efficiently engage with our context, and connect the local to the global?
Artists will arrive with questions to be answered and artistic plans to be elaborated which are probably inspired by their own contexts and / or by global challenges – what we offer is to try to help them getting closer to some kind of solutions in their creative process while they explore a specific local environment, to make them use a special context in order to come up with global answers which are essential for their work.
The artists in residency can firmly rely on our expertise in working in public space and in certain special areas of the city with their residents as well as on our network of partners and venues while exploring the local context.
Last but not least our residency program aims at overtly advocating the autonomy of art and artistic creation, the freedom of speech, equality and diversity. We fight for these values in our local context, and we hope that we might be able to help artists from other contexts to get inspired by what they experience in Budapest.

– How do we incorporate acts of solidarity and equity into our program?
We aim to open the opportunity for artists with less financial means (eventually also for artists with refugee / exile background) to participate at our residency program. For this purpose, we have developed a 3-level payment structure based on circular economy: the participation fees paid by artists at the payable program (level 1) make possible for us to receive a limited number of artists for free (level 2) and also to pay bursary to a few artists in need.

– You can apply with a project idea in its early phase or at a turning point, or with a special research plan which is essential to a future project or for your artistic strategy.

– The project idea or the research plan shall be connected to creation in public space and reflect on the interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to the question of the possible roles of art in a wider urban context.

– The applicants shall have a clear idea about what kind of support from the organisers’ side could help developing their project idea or research. (What knowledge, experience, expertise is missing? What kind of discussion / consultation / encounter / visit could help?)

– The applicants shall have an idea about what kind of working environment would be useful and relevant for them (in order that the organisers could offer them a working space).
The working space would be an indispensable base for the artistic creation, but we encourage the participants to work in public space or on site as much as possible.

– The applicant shall be open to collaborate with other international guest artists and / or local artists, art students, to engage with the local context, maybe to involve local residents.

– The residency program put an emphasize on the process, not on an “end-product”, yet we ask the applicants to offer a presentation / demonstration of a tangible outcome at the end of the program.

– The length of the residency would ideally be from 2 weeks to 1 month. It can also be longer if it is artistically justified.

– We encourage artists to rather return, to plan more shorter residencies than 1 long one.

– Maximum 4 artists in residency at the same time.

– Participating artists can collaborate with each other in their projects, but it is not necessarily required.

– Partners, pets, children can come with the participating artist, but all the extra requirements and costs are out of the organisers’ responsibility.

– The artists can choose the format of the presentation / demonstration of the outcomes of their residency program – in consultation with the organisers.

– The projects developed (partly or entirely) in the frame of the residency program might be programmed by Placcc Festival (in return for artistic fees), but the participation at the residency doesn’t lead automatically to a presentation at the festival.

– We encourage the artists to follow the process in an online documentation (which can be shared also on the platforms of the organisers), social media take-overs are also possible.

– The organisers offer social media coverage to the residency program and the participating artist.

– The organisers don’t offer press coverage for the residency itself but may give a press visibility to the presentation / demonstration of the outcomes (to be discussed prior to the presentation / demonstration).

– We aim to open the opportunity for artists with less financial means (eventually also for artists with refugee / exile background) to participate at our residency program. For this purpose, we have developed a 3-level payment structure.

– 3 levels of participation:

1) Payable.
Participation fee is:
coming soon
The application is ongoing without deadlines with decisions in every 3 months: the decisions on the applications arriving by 15th of January, 15th of April, 15th of July and 15th of October are made till 31st of January, 30th of April, 31st of July and 31st of October.

2) Free
Applicants are invited to submit their application through open calls. The frequency of the open calls depends on the income from the participation fees of Level 1. Current open calls are published on our website and social media channels.

3) With bursary.
Applicants are invited to submit their application through open calls. The frequency of the open calls depends on the income from the participation fees of Level 1. Current open calls are published on our website and social media channels.

– Travel costs, accommodation and insurance are paid for the artists with bursary, all the other artists shall cover these costs.

– The organisers cover the fees for the experts and other contributors helping and accompanying the residency process (unless the demand is not realistic).

– The organisers cover the rental costs of the working space (unless the demand is not realistic).

– The organisers provide basic materials for the implementation of the residency plans and help purchasing if extra materials are needed (to be discussed prior to and during the residency).

– The organisers provide the applicants with travel and visa information.

– The organisers help finding accommodation.

– The organisers help arranging local travel (bike rental or passes for public transport).

– The organisers provide up-to-date information on relevant cultural and other events and activities in Budapest.

Coming soon…

Coming soon…

Coming soon…

Coming soon…