Exchange between purveyors of culture to push back both national and disciplinary borders is encouraged by the Prince Claus Fund. Great importance is attached to cultural exchange between non-Western countries. Exchange will encourage critical reflection on one’s own culture and on the culture of others, generating cultural self-confidence. The Fund also hopes to contribute to a critical reflection on the cultural foundations of international cooperation.
A worldwide platform for intellectual debate on shared values in the form of meetings, discussions, lectures and publications is envisaged by the Fund. Only too often is this debate dismissed as useless and unnecessary. Appreciation and encouragement will attract more recognition and respect and facilitate the propagation of important ideas.
The Fund intends to contribute to those activities of artists and intellectuals that will benefit cultural interaction. In this day and age, cultural products often bear an individual signature - a good reason for the Fund to support and protect individual quality and integrity. The arts are a case in point.
The Fund is especially interested in supporting rising artists and budding intellectuals to whom a small sum can make all the difference. The Fund hopes that such support will endow these artists and intellectuals with a certain degree of prestige and thereby with protection and legitimacy. This is sometimes necessary, because culture cannot always sit on the fence. Just as there can be no change without struggle and debate, there is no art without criticism.
All cultural policy provokes resistance. The Fund does not evade this issue, even if support may sometimes be interpreted as a political stance. That is why the Fund is interested in the ‘assertive’ element in a society: people who strive for ‘self-emancipation’, democracy and justice.
The Fund intends to pay attention to cultural ‘experiments’ that link the familiar and the alien, i.e. to stimulate attempts to combine one’s own achievements with those of others. This implies a special interest in forging links between the ‘ zones of silence’, the regions and cultural areas which do not feature in world news and receive scant attention elsewhere
