Fundació Carulla expands the Lluís Carulla Award to turn it into a cultural entrepreneurship program

The Carulla Foundation expands the Lluís Carulla Award to turn it into a cultural entrepreneurship program with the aim of promoting cultural initiatives that improve society through the arts.

The Lluís Carulla Award is a biennial cultural entrepreneurship award and program that not only rewards financially but also promotes and concretizes the best ideas towards their realization. With the aim of forming, promoting and making viable cultural projects and ideas that transform and improve Catalan society, the award has become a unique platform. This new call, open today until February 29, seeks to expand the impact of the award, making the process itself an opportunity to select and enrich the projects. Thus, the process is structured in 4 phases, becoming a dynamic day of learning and growth for all participants.

• Phase 1 - The Academy: 4 intensive workshops will be offered based on the Foundation's own methodology, Mutare, from where entrepreneurs will acquire practical and specific knowledge to improve their project. The 20 participating projects will receive a training certification from the Professional Association of Cultural Managers.
  
• Phase 2 – Incubation: A maximum of 10 finalists will be admitted who will receive personalized support to accelerate the project. All projects that arrive in this phase will receive a grant of €1,000.
  
• Phase 3 – Delivery: The award jury, made up of personalities and cultural entrepreneurs, will choose two winning projects from among the 10 incubated. The endowment of the award will be €100,000 (€60,000 for the Best transformative cultural project and €25,000 for the Best transformative cultural Idea). They will also receive an impact assessment study valued at €15,000. The prize will be awarded at the end of 2024.
  
• Phase 4 – Expansion: The winners will receive cultural and business support for two years, in addition to being hosted in residence at the new headquarters of the Carulla Foundation, opened in 2024, in the Poblenou district of Barcelona.
  

The current edition of the Lluís Carulla Award will be developed in alliance with the Association of Cultural Managers of Catalonia in addition to the business support of Netmentora and Self-Employment. The total investment of the Lluís Carulla Award is €100,000 in funding and €50,000 in training and support for participating projects.

The call for the award will be open until February 29, 2024. On February 7 at 5 p.m., the Carulla Foundation has organized an in-person session at its new headquarters (C. Almogàvers, 214) where the director, Marta Esteve , will explain the details of the award and answer questions from entrepreneurs who are interested in applying. In the last edition (2022) almost 200 nominations were received.

Marta Esteve, director of the Carulla Foundation, highlights the need for programs such as the Lluís Carulla Award to make the cultural fabric richer and richer: "At a time when there is so much talk about cultural rights, through the new law promoted by the department of culture, the Lluís Carulla Award aims to find projects that promote cultural access and participation and territorial balance. Because there are many innovative cultural projects and what they need is support in these initial phases so that they can be real, viable and sustainable. The Lluís Carulla Award acts as a radar for all these projects so that they can grow, connect with each other, improve and become realities that transform and improve Catalan society".

Regarding the expansion of the award acceleration process, Marta Esteve emphasizes that "we want to accompany as many projects as possible by offering a space for training, reflection and connection. An optimal environment for them to take root, take off and as soon as possible, they can become a reality".