Hospital Rooms has been announced as a winner of the prestigious 2023 Art Explora –Académie des beaux-arts European Award. The organisation was one of four winners announced at a ceremony on 12th December at the Institut de France, Paris.
The recipient of the €50,000 award, Hospital Rooms nurtures culture and creativity in mental health hospitals across the UK through accessible programming for patients, carers, and health workers. They were awarded the prize for their innovative project Digital Art School, which saw internationally acclaimed artists run free remote workshops from their studios and homes. It is one of the only creative outlets currently accessible within mental health hospital wards in the UK and has reached over 142,000 participants since launching in 2020.
Hospital Rooms, partnering with NHS England and Winsor & Newton, will now send top-quality art materials and deliver a safeguarded programme and interactive platform, designed by and for people with severe mental illness, to every single mental health ward in the country.
We are so grateful to receive the European Prize for Digital Art School. Art Explora’s support will help us harness an unprecedented opportunity to bring creativity and culture to every NHS inpatient with severe mental illness in England. Digital Art School has the capacity to demonstrate how creative and cultural access has a role to play alongside medical interventions in supporting self-belief Jand social connectedness, and we see so much potential for the project to have resonance internationally.
Niamh White, Hospital Rooms Co-Founder,
The Art Explora Award encourages new forms of audience engagement and participation in arts and culture, supporting innovative projects, across all art forms, that can be shared, replicated and scaled across Europe. This year’s winners were rewarded for their innovative approaches to increase public engagement and participation in arts and culture. Other recipients of the 2023 award were:
· Hirundo, Associação para o Pensamento Crítico, Cultura e Desenvolvimento (Portugal – Greece)
· Sèvres – Manufacture et Musée nationaux (France)
· Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles (Belgium) – Winner of the Audience Choice Award
The Art Explora – Académie des beaux-arts European Award
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.
Applicants were invited to register in one of the following 3 categories:
Category 1: Cultural organisations up to €500,000 annual expenditure
Category 2:Cultural organisations from €500,000 to €2 million annual expenditure
Category 3:Cultural organisations over €2 million annual expenditure
The 3 winners (one from each category) were chosen from an official shortlist of 19 projects, each received a €50,000 grant. With 5000 votes online recorded between 6-17th November, the general public elected the winner of the Audience Choice Award from the same 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-art
Heidi Wiley – Managing Director at the European Theatre Convention
About
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.
The Académie des beaux-arts (French Academy of Fine Arts) is one of the five academies that make up the Institut de France (Institute of France). It promotes artistic creation through all forms of expression, notably by organizing competitions, awarding annual prizes, funding artist residencies, distributing grants and working to champion France’s cultural heritage.
In order to fulfil these roles, the Académie des beaux-arts maintains a portfolio of assets made up of gifts and bequests, and also runs major cultural foundations such as the Musée Marmottan Monet (Marmottan Monet Museum) in Paris or Claude Monet’s House and Gardens in Giverny. As per its statutes, the Académie includes 67 members and 67 correspondents from 9 different artistic disciplines, as well as 16 international associate members.
