The Arvo Pärt Centre will award scholarships to French composer Benoît Sitzia and Spanish poet Elena Medel

This year, the Arvo Pärt Centre is awarding two scholarships for creative work at the Arvo Pärt Centre. The recipients of the Arvo Pärt Centre scholarship in 2024 are French composer Benoît Sitzia and Spanish poet Elena Medel.

“Also, to our surprise, this year saw a significantly higher number of applications for the scholarship compared to previous years. A total of 575 creative individuals from 86 countries applied for the residency, making our selection process very challenging. However, we are extremely pleased that information about our residency programme has reached international art and residency networks, thereby expanding its outreach to more and more creative individuals,” said Anu Kivilo, CEO of the Arvo Pärt Centre.

Benoît Sitzia is a French composer and musicologist and the artistic director and manager of the instrumental ensemble Ars Nova. He is also the co-founder and president of the Collège Contemporain, an organisation that brings together composers, performers and musicologists, as well as an active promoter of musical life both in France and internationally, which has seen him collaborate with various music collectives.

Spanish poet and essayist Elena Medel is a multifaceted creator who is active both as a poet and as a publisher and essayist. In 2004, she founded the poetry-focused publishing house La Bella Varsovia, which has since become one of the leading poetry publishers in Spain.

The Arvo Pärt Centre has been awarding residency scholarships since 2021 to provide a peaceful and inspiring environment for creative individuals from various fields to explore and implement their ideas. The duration of the residency is from one to four weeks. The scholarship covers the resident’s transportation and accommodation costs and also includes a daily allowance.

The recipients of the scholarships so far have been Austrian composer Annamaria Kowalsky, Belarusian composer Volha Padhajskaya, Estonian stage director and theatre figure Ivar Põllu, Iranian composer and guitarist Golfam Khayam, German composer Sophia Jani, and Estonian writer and translator Indrek Koff.

The creative space at the Arvo Pärt Centre may also be rented outside of the scholarship programme by filling out the application found on the centre’s website: www.arvopart.ee/en/residency/.