We are pleased to announce that the NAHR 12 day artistic residency promoted by the innovative project EMPACT – Empathy and Sustainability: The Art of Thinking like a Mountain, is about to begin! It will start the 4th to end on the 15th of July and has been co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme (Grant Agreement No: – EMPACT – CREA-CULT-2021-COOP-2). 

The EMPACT residencies initiate a dialogue between artists, sustainability experts, philosophers and social scientists, in order to explore the importance of empathy as a key to aid people tackle and act upon climate change. Specifically, EMPACT aims to facilitate artists in creating, through sustainable practices, art that fosters an empathic stance towards non-human beings and nature; that is, art that encourages people to relate to non-human suffering in a first-personal manner and thus acquire experiential knowledge about climate change related issues. EMPACT considers the artist’s own emotional and empathic stance as a key point that will allow them to effectively incorporate the concept of sustainability in their artistic production

NAHR has a long trajectory organizing residencies that do exactly that. Every year, it chooses an element of nature and invites artists, architects, scientists and other professionals across disciplines to take inspiration from that topic and its interconnected role in the natural and cultural ecosystems of Val Taleggio and the world.  

The five selected participants for the NAHR/EMPACT programme are Ana Pečar, Andria Zachariou, Kaja Rakušček, Lea Petrou and Mirian Kolev.  During the residency they will visit high and low pastures, walk across the mountains, attend dedicated lectures by specialists in the area, and be guided across the surrounding landscapes (natural and built), as well as offered the opportunity for site-specific investigations.