SAHA Sustainability Fund

SAHA Sustainability Fund

Year-long support from SAHA to 11 independent artist initiatives from 8 different cities!

SAHA Sustainability Fund continues to support independent art initiatives across Turkey through an open call. With the fund, which was created to contribute to the development of non-profit art initiatives and encourage their public programs and events, 40 different initiatives have received program funds and capacity improvement support from SAHA for at least one year. This year, SAHA Sustainability Fund is funding 11 different initiatives from the cities of Adana, Çanakkale, Diyarbakır, Eskişehir, Hatay, İstanbul, İzmir and Mersin. The applications received to the open call in September were evaluated by SAHA's project and event team and prioritized by the SAHA Board of Directors according to the mission and fields of activity of the association. The initiatives that SAHA will support throughout 2024 are A4, Alan Antakya, Darağaç, Fırın, Kırık, Loading, Mahsul Projesi, Manifold, Nesin İstasyon and Sub. In addition to equally distributing 1,000,000 TL (approximately 35,000 EUR) of net and gratuitous funding to 10 initiatives until the end of the year, SAHA has expanded its support to Kültürhane in Mersin, for which it has been providing SAHA Sustainability Fund for two years.

Following the February 6 earthquakes, SAHA organized an open forum in Istanbul to bring together artists and art initiatives living in or visiting the region to share ideas and information. Based on the suggestions that emerged from the forum, this year's SAHA Sustainability Fund will be directed primarily to art initiatives operating in the earthquake zone or aiming to create programs to address post-earthquake needs, and to the field of climate and ecology in the context of the World Weather Network, which SAHA runs with its international partners. Kültürhane brings the effort to create a unique pluralistic community through culture and arts activities to a new cultural medium on a neighborhood scale. Built using used commercial containers, the new space will include a multi-purpose hall, repair, art and children's workshops, a library of goods and basic living facilities. In light of the strategic importance of Mersin in the aftermath of the earthquake, the space will provide logistical support to people and institutions working in the disaster zone and contribute to the rehabilitation of earthquake victims who have sheltered in Mersin.

Initiatives receiving the SAHA Sustainability Fund through 2024:
·      A4 (Diyarbakır)
·      Alan Antakya (Hatay)
·      Darağaç (İzmir)
·      Fırın (Eskişehir)
·      Kırık (İstanbul)
·      Kültürhane (Mersin)
·      Loading (Diyarbakır)
·      Mahsul Projesi (Adana)
·      Manifold (çevrimiçi)
·      Nesin İstasyon (İzmir)
·      Sub (Çanakkale)

A4 Open Art Space (Diyarbakır)
Founded in Diyarbakır to support the creative potentials of young people, to create new opportunities for them, and to help them gain experience, A4 Open Art Space was founded, providing a multi-functional art space for alternative artistic works, encouraging interdisciplinary practices. A4 Open Art Space aims to increase their contact with research-driven artistic practices, to increase the visibility of Diyarbakır in the international context, and to realize guest artist residency programs. A4 also provides space for seminars, conversations geared towards developing artistic practices and serves as an open studio space for local artists.

Alan Antakya (Hatay)
Alan Antakya is a civil initiative founded by contemporary dance performance artists Didem Koban and Süleyman Demirkol, who were active in the region after the February 6 earthquake. After the earthquake, as a volunteer, they came together with children and young people in Antakya and Iskenderun regions and carried out dance and movement activities 2 days a week in June-July- August. They aim to minimize the traumas experienced by people in the region after the earthquake, physically and spiritually, through dance and movement, and to organize dance and movement workshops by coming together with children, young people and adults on certain days of the week, and to continue the workshops throughout 2024.

Darağaç (İzmir)
Darağaç is a non-profit art collective located in Izmir Umurbey Mahallesi and an open space where new communication strategies are experienced. The main goal of Darağaç is to transform the neighborhood into a space where young artists can show their work and to create a common discourse. Darağaç, due to the lack of venues in Izmir, acts as a reconciliation zone for the emerging artist and the public space.

FIRIN (Eskişehir)
FIRIN, established in 2019 as a subsidiary of Eldem Art Space, is an interdisciplinary art platform designed with the purpose of providing a space for independent projects. The exhibition space, formerly an old bakery, now offers a dedicated area for independent projects and artists. Through its annual programs organized via applications and invitations, FIRIN aims to support local, national art projects while also serving as an experimental space for production and exhibition. 

KIRIK (Istanbul)
KIRIK is a research-based, participatory and critical initiative for people and topics in the cracks. By choosing KIRIK as the name of the initiative, they embrace and reclaim multiple meanings of this versatile word in Turkish such as crack, broken, hue, hybrid, fault, strange, queer and bent.
In its first year, KIRIK hosted a number of discussions on the radical meaning of solidarity. In 2022 they programmed films and talks on the ecological crisis, colonialism, extractivism, capitalism as well as crime, genocide, and accountability. The thematic focuses of their 2023-2024 talks programs are cultural polarization, cultural hegemony and the complexities of boycott and sanctions in proximate geographies.

Kültürhane (Mersin)
Kültürhane takes the effort to create a unique pluralistic community through culture and arts activities to a new cultural space on a neighborhood scale. Built using used commercial containers, the new space will include a multi-purpose hall, repair, art and children's workshops, a library of goods and basic living facilities. In light of the strategic importance of Mersin in the aftermath of the earthquake, the space will provide logistical support to people and institutions working in the disaster zone and contribute to the rehabilitation of earthquake victims who have taken refuge in Mersin.

Loading (Diyarbakır)
Loading is a non-profit art space that aims to enrich contemporary art dialogue in Diyarbakır since 2017. Their founding goal was not to bring together the artists living and working in Diyarbakır under one roof, but rather to resolve the issues they have been encountering in production and project-related issues, to archive the contemporary art practices from the first quarter of the 2000s, and to strengthen the international artistic awareness and interaction in Diyarbakır through various activities.

Mahsul (Adana, Mersin, İzmir)
Mahsul is a curatorial initiative that intersects the fields of ecology and art, created in 2021 to research, document, and narrate the products of rural modernization on the delta plains along the Mediterranean coast. Mahsul associates the effects of the environmental transformation that has gained momentum and dimension, with the agricultural development plan that served the ideal of the modern nation-state from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early Republic. It reads various interventions, such as drying swamps, changing land laws, settlement efforts, crop experiments, cotton colonies, new railway lines, factories, mines, dams, and power plants, as processes of diverse beings more than just humans. Mahsul reminds us of the existing ecology, ancient knowledge, and communities that have been erased by the landscapes of yield.

Manifold (Online)
Launched in 2016, Manifold is primarily an online cultural criticism journal that exists with its voluntary contributors. Being online also allows it
to include podcast and video production. Its printed book publishing practice aims to enable the original content accumulated in Manifold to materialize independently of Manifold, with a different editorial approach. Talks, exhibitions and workshops are also organized within the scope of Manifold’s publishing program. 
Manifold is a not-for-profit project, which is entirely an outcome of collective production. It is sustained with the dedication of its editors, conributors and supporters. As of October 10, 2023, the online journal, which contains 2,432 pieces of content in its database, has nearly five hundred conributors and an average of 25,000 unique readers per month.

Nesin İstasyon (Izmir)
Nesin Station is a hybrid community driven by the past and former participants of the Nesin Villages. As students, coordinators, volunteers, and instructors; we are organizing programs, creating modules, and designing collective experiences with different groups and concepts. This diverse team focuses on supporting the programs of Nesin Art Village, which offers art production and learning possibilities for young participants in an environment open to critical thinking and artistic research. The Village offers a democratizing platform by forming unlikely groups comprising different socioeconomic classes, ethnicities, political views and religious beliefs. People from every corner of our country and beyond, from different disciplines and backgrounds, come together to think, work, and express collectively. This provides a unique and invaluable opportunity to know one another and allows new dialogues to emerge.

Sub (Çanakkale)
In April 2017, the initiative began operating in a multicultural neighborhood of Çanakkale with a roof created on columns and beams laid on the walls of neighboring buildings. As of 2020, the initiative is focused on creating alternative narratives that transform the memory of the geo-subject in relation to ecological assets and processes, with the urgency of providing a space where tomorrow’s possibilities while reflecting on today’s accelerating change.