The kick-off meeting of ECHO Academies (ECHOAc) took place on February 6th and 7th, in Athens, Greece! On behalf of CUMEDIAE, Stefanie Thomas, Director of Strategy and Projects, who coordinates our role in the project attended the event hosted by Project coordinators Inter Alia.
The project aims at fostering young and emerging European talents in the fields of comics (in Greece), fashion design (in Bulgaria), music (in North Macedonia), photography and architecture (in Hungary) by using heritage (Karagiozis Shadow Puppet Theatre in Greece, Traditional Folklore Costumes of Rhodope region in Bulgaria, Ritual Songs in North Macedonia, and Urban Industrial Heritage of Budapest 1860-1960 in Hungary) as a means and inspiration for their work.
The ECHO Academies project started on January 1st 2023, and will run for 24 months.
After three days of exchange and focusing on the organisation of the Academies, Stefanie shares her expectations about this new project:
“CUMEDIAE’s team is looking forward to working closely with the other consortium partners to provide unique experiences for the artists across the residencies and to link them with European and International networks. The project allows many avenues for the exploration of very niche aspects of cultural heritage of Europe and specifically of the Baltic region. We look forward to the challenge of expanding the knowledge of the highlighted thematic areas and vestiges of cultural heritage to encourage Artists across Europe to actively participate.”
