UNESCO-Aschberg Programme for Artists and Cultural Professionals 2025 – YOA

Deadline: February 23, 2026

Applications are open for the UNESCO-Aschberg Programme for Artists and Cultural Professionals 2025. UNESCO is launching a name for tasks below the UNESCO-Aschberg Programme for Artists and Cultural Professionals, in keeping with the 1980 Recommendation regarding the Status of the Artist and the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

Generously supported by Norway and reconceptualized in 2021 in response to the affect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the programme contributes to handle structural vulnerabilities and construct resilience amongst artists and cultural professionals in occasions of uncertainty and crises.

Objectives

This name for tasks goals to assist authorities and civil society-led initiatives that shield and promote the standing of the artist and creative freedom in its broad sense, as recognised by UNESCO – that’s, encompassing a bundle of rights protected below worldwide legislation, together with:

• The proper to create with out censorship or intimidation
• The proper to have creative work supported, distributed, and remunerated
• Artists’ proper to freedom of motion
• Artists’ proper to freedom of affiliation
• The safety of the social and financial rights of artists
• Everyone’s proper to take part in cultural life 

To advance these rights, the decision for tasks gives two tracks:

• TRACK 1 – For Governments and Public Institutions: Technical help to revise or design legal guidelines, rules, insurance policies and measures that promote and shield the standing of the artist and creative freedom.
• TRACK 2 – For Civil Society Organisations: Financial help for progressive tasks that advance the standing of the artist and creative freedom, on the native, nationwide, regional or worldwide degree. These could embody, for instance, capability constructing, advocacy, monitoring and analysis, and so on.

Funding

Track 1

While technical help supplied below monitor 1 is primarily professional-pushed, candidates could request as much as $30,000 with a view to assist the logistics of the venture’s implementation (e.g., logistical group of conferences/consultations/capability constructing actions, funding of communication actions, and so on.).

Track 2

Applicants could request monetary assist for as much as $50,000 to implement their proposed venture. This funding can cowl prices instantly associated to venture supply, corresponding to:

• Organizing coaching periods, workshops, capability-constructing actions
• Developing instruments, sources, communication supplies
• Conducting advocacy campaigns, analysis and monitoring actions
• Providing emergency assist to artists and cultural professionals and establishments, together with relocation, residencies, or secure working house.
• Covering different logistical bills vital for the venture’s implementation.

Eligibility

Applicants must be native, nationwide, regional or worldwide civil society organizations that function on a not-for-profit foundation.

Applicants could embrace:

• Non-governmental organizations that promote the standing of the artist and creative freedom, and associations and foundations energetic within the cultural and inventive industries, together with cultural and skilled associations,
• Networks or unions of artists and cultural professionals,
• Academic establishments and analysis centres.

To be eligible, candidates should:

• Have no less than two (02) years of authorized existence (proof of authorized registration required);
• Have instantly applied, over the previous two years, no less than one venture within the cultural and inventive sector (present exercise experiences and monetary statements for the previous two years, 2023-2024).

Priority will likely be given to:

• CSOs that haven’t beforehand acquired assist below the UNESCO-Aschberg Programme,
• Projects that profit artists and cultural professionals from creating nations and that reply to UNESCO’s strategic priorities – Africa, gender equality, Small Island Developing States (SIDS), youth, and fostering an inter-sectoral strategy.

Application

Submit the application by e-mail to [email protected]. All candidates will obtain affirmation of receipt.

For extra data, go to UNESCO-Aschberg Programme.