Each year, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, Villa Albertine welcomes five thinkers, creators, or culture professionals from the African continent to complete a residency in the US. The five laureates, selected out of the current call for applications, will get the opportunity to complete a two-month exploratory residency in a US city in 2024. This residency programme aims to promote unique creative voices and practices from Africa with the potential to shed light on major contemporary issues, as well as open up new perspectives in the US and France.
The programme will select five two-month residencies that each focus on a particular US city. Villa Albertine has permanent offices in ten cities (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Washington DC), each one being active across a broader geographical area. Villa Albertine pursues specific thematic areas in a number of these cities, such as the environment in Miami, space exploration in Houston, institutional reform in Washington DC, etc. Applicants may choose to explore either these given themes, or others that would be relevant to the desired geographical area.
Applicants must be citizens of an African country, and their professional activity must be based primarily in Africa. All disciplines related to the arts, culture, and ideas are welcome. Applicants may submit projects from fields such as the visual arts, design, architecture, performance, music, cinema, digital creation, fiction writing, comic books, or social science, among others.
In order to be able to communicate with professionals in the US, applicants must speak fluent English. As such, they are required to submit a three-minute video in which they introduce themselves and their project in English. Fluency in French is not required.
Applicants must be at least 21 years of age prior to their estimated residency start date. This call is open to individual applications only; collective group applications shall not be accepted.
The programme covers a residency allowance for everyday expenses (meals, local transport, etc.), based on the average cost of living for each of the ten geographical areas where Villa Albertine has a branch; a round trip to the US from the resident’s home country; accommodation; health, civil liability, and repatriation insurance; and any necessary visa fees.
