ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture

The annual award honours inspiring examples of people and organizations who, with courage and creative power, imagine new paths for Europe.

In honour of former ECF President Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, the European Cultural Foundation hosted eleven successful editions of the Princess Margriet Award for Culture, the annual award for inspiring people and organisations who imagined new paths for Europe. With the blessing of Princess Margriet as patron and namesake of the award, the European Cultural Foundation has developed the award into the Culture of Solidarity Fund fund that addresses the many challenges that Europe is now facing.

The Princess Margriet Award has brought forth many important and esteemed laureates, you can view all the laureates below.

2019: Democracy Needs Imagination

The laureates of the 2019 ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture are Ahdaf Soueif (Cairo/London) & City of Women (Ljubljana).

The 2019 Award theme is Democracy Needs Imagination. The two laureates represent distinct cultural approaches, but both also offer a hopeful vision of democracy by redefining our understanding of culture and its capacity to improve a common European social reality.

The jury convened in early 2019 and the two laureates were announced on 9 May 2019, Europe Day. The Award was presented on 2 October 2019 in Amsterdam and includes a sum of € 25.000 per laureate.

Get to know Ahdaf Soueif

Get to know City of Women

History of the Award

The award was initiated in 2008 in honour of the foundation’s former President, HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, who has shown enormous dedication to the important role of culture in invigorating democracy in Europe. The Award was established in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For the last ten years, the ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture has honoured laureates as diverse as the cultural fields in which they work. They come from the performing and visual arts, literature, music, film, cultural activism, critical thinking, architecture, digital and media culture. Brilliant, innovative, daring, compassionate – these individuals and collectives have shone out in their resolve to find a better way, even in the face of global upheaval, and to shape a future that is more fair and respectful of both people and the planet that we share.

All Awards

2019 |Ahdaf Soueif | City of Women

2018 |Borderland | Forensic Architecture

2017 |Aslı Erdoğan | Navid Kermani | Luc Mishalle | Marina Naprushkina

2016 |Krétakör | Medialab-Prado

2015 |Athens Biennale | Visual Culture Research Center

2014 |Teodor Celakoski | Teatro Valle Occupato

2013 |Yoel Gamzou | Lia & Dan Perjovschi

2012 |Charles Esche | John Akomfrah

2011 |Kutluğ Ataman | Šejla Kamerić

2010 |Borka Pavićević | Stefan Kaegi

2008 |Stuart Hall | Jerôme Bel & Pichet Klunchun

Networked European Media

As part of the Initiative for European Public Space, ECF is building a coalition to shape a European media landscape. Together with journalists, researchers and concerned citizens, we are drawing and testing a blueprint for a networked European media model based on public values and independent from both market and government.

Digital European Public Spaces

Europe is facing real challenges in coping with market-driven and mainly non-European online platforms on which dis-/and misinformation and nationalistic tendencies easily grow and threaten democracy. There is no real European digital public space that is based on values of collaboration, sharing and safeguarding privacy and freedom of people.

Physical spaces for public debate

All across Europe, citizens of all backgrounds and cultures are organising their communities. They create spaces where culture works to strengthen social ties and helps to imagine alternative ways of living and engaging with others in understanding, trust and peace. ECF connects these spaces and thus helps to build a crucial infrastructure for a cultural movement that can reclaim European democracy.

Vision funds

Vision Funds are a placeholder for grants and pooled funding meant for ideas with potential; for responses to urgencies and for projects that make a real difference and imagine solutions.

Connected Action for the Commons

Connected Action for the Commons was an action-research programme and network with six cultural organisations from across Europe and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) as collaborating hubs. Under the thematic focus Connecting Culture, Communities and Democracy we worked together with Connected Action for the Commons, a network and action research programme.

Idea Camp

The Idea Camp was a three-day incubator workshop for some of the most creative and adventurous ideas from across Europe and neighbouring countries, created by the Connected Action for the Commons Network.

Doc Next Network

ECF has been active in the field of young people and media for many years and specifically through the Youth and Media programme. In 2010, a new network called Doc Next Network sprung up out of this collaboration. Initiated and supported by ECF, the network aimed to create a vibrant European space where young people’s media messages are more accessible in mainstream public discourse.

European Neighbourhood programme

Read about ECF’s European Neighbourhood programme which has stimulated civil society working in culture to influence policy reform and societal development in the Balkans, Kaliningrad, Moldova, Turkey, the Ukraine and Arab-Mediterranean countries.

Trio

In 2011, ECF and Soros Foundation Moldova launched this two-year project in rural Moldova to improve conditions in small-scale local communities facing enormous challenges – growing poverty, high levels of youth unemployment, underdeveloped public services and social disintegration. The programme ran until December 2013.