DG CONNECT – Preparatory Action – Art and the digital: Unleashing creativity for European water management – 2024

Objectives 

• STARTS residencies: Artistic experimentation with key technologies and their uses: Launch artistic experimentation that bring together artists with local stakeholders to work on concrete challenges related to water
• STARTS Sylloge: a narrative on new approaches to address water challenges: Create with input from key players in project and with help of STARTS residents a corpus of discourses, designs, installations, videos, AR/VR installations and performances that unfold and tell stories linked to water, biodiversity in water systems, importance of water for local communities, new ways of interaction with the oceans, new ideas to address water scarcity, or stories rooted in scientific data on oceans and on water use, also related to fighting disinformation on environmental issues
• STARTS water community: Develop a community at the nexus of art, digital, and water that can contribute to a new thinking in policy, business and society on sustainable water use

Priorities

• Priority 1: To tackle challenges linked to water, for example the loss of biodiversity in water systems, and/or resilience in these systems
• Priority 2: To use new innovative techniques and technologies (for example artificial intelligence, IoT, immersive technologies, and/or high performance computing (HPC))
• Priority 3: To incorporate perspectives from different disciplines, including art, philosophy, science, and technology
• Priority 4: To build upon work already done in previous STARTS Water calls
• Priority 5: To incorporate different countries and regions around Europe, but a particular focus should be paid on Central and Eastern Europe, and the Nordic countries

Among financed actions

• Conferences
• Workshops
• Online activities
• Educational workshops
• Exhibitions

Eligibility

• Be a legal person
• Be a public or private entity
• Be established in one of the eligible countries: EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories)
• A consortium composed of at least 6 entities, established in at least 4 different EU Member States must be constituted

Additional information

• Initial duration of the action: between 18 and 24 months
• Contact: CNECT-I4@ec.europa.eu

Useful

• Call document: Click here
• Other call documents : Click here
• DG website: Click here
• More information : Click here

• Total budget of the call: 2.5 million euro
• Amount of the grant: 2.5 million euro
• Funding rate: up to 80 % of the total eligible costs