On December 12, at an Award Ceremony at the Institut de France, the four winners were announced of the 2023 Art Explora-Académie des beaux-arts European Award. The announcement was made during the annual Arts & Audiences Now! event which began with a roundtable discussion, moderated by News Tank Culture, exploring the role of arts and culture in building social cohesion. This year’s winners were rewarded for their innovative approaches to increase public engagement and participation in arts and culture.
2024 winners
Category 1: cultural organisations up to 500,000 EUR annual expenditure
Hirundo, Associação para o Pensamento Crítico, Cultura e Desenvolvimento (Portugal—Greece) for the project “Open Camp—A new narrative from children in refugee camps” which empowers refugee children with storytelling and animated cinema to document their stories.
Category 2: cultural organisations from 500,000 EUR to 2 million EUR annual expenditure
Hospital Rooms (United Kingdom) for the project “Digital Art School” which aims at nurturing culture and creativity in mental health hospitals through accessible programming for patients, carers, and health workers.
Category 3: cultural organisations over 2 million EUR annual expenditure
Sèvres—Manufacture et Musée nationaux (France) for the project “The Manifacture at the hospital” which enables the Sèvres Manufacture to reveal its secrets and expertise to patients, carers and visitors at the heart of care facilities.
Audience Choice Award
Théâtre National de Wallonie-Bruxelles (Belgium) for the project "An art centre in a care home” which combines art and care to reveal the beauty of a place where you least expect it.
The Art Explora—Académie des beaux-arts European Award is open to all cultural organisations in all artistic sectors, from museums to theatres, opera houses to community organisations, festivals to art centres throughout Europe.
The year was marked by a growing number of applicants, with more than 200 applicants (150 in 2022) from 21 different countries!
The 3 winners (one from each category) were chosen from an official shortlist of 19 projects, each received a 50,000 EUR grant.
With 5000 votes online recorded between November 6–17, the general public elected the winner of the Audience Choice Award from the 19 shortlisted projects.
The 2023 jury
–Lluís Bonet, Professor at the University of Barcelona
–Tiffany Fukuma, Managing director at Trans Europe Halles
–Edilia Gänz, Director of the FEDORA platform
–Christophe Leribault, President of the public establishment of the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie and Academician
–Muriel Mayette-Holtz, Director of the National Theater of Nice and Academician
–Angelin Preljocaj, Dancer, choreographer and Academician
–Laurent Petitgirard, Composer and Permanent Secretary of the Académie des beaux-arts
–Heidi Wiley, Managing director at the European Theatre Convention
On December 12, the Institut de France hosted Arts & Audiences Now!, the second annual international event focusing on innovating forms of engagement and participation with arts and culture. The event was launched by Art Explora Foundation and the Académie des beaux-arts in 2022.
This major annual event offers the opportunity to exchange ideas and good practice across sectors—including health, business, education. technology—and across Europe, encouraging new forms of public engagement and participation with arts and culture.
Discover last year’s event and the shortlisted organisations in the annual publication 2022 !
About Art Explora
Art Explora is an international foundation that inspires new encounters between arts and audiences—locally, nationally and internationally.
Our imaginative, contemporary approach encourages new forms of access, participation and engagement with arts and culture, pushing boundaries with digital technology and mobile programmes.
We work in partnership with artists, cultural organisations and communities, exploring all art forms, and creating transformative cultural experiences for everyone.
Art Explora is a non-profit arts organisation founded in 2019 with offices in France and UK and bringing together many partners and volunteers.
