Dear colleagues,
As 2024 comes to an end, we are delighted to share our achievements and reflect on our endeavours to strengthen democracy in Armenia through culture. It was an incredibly fruitful year, marked by initiatives aimed at promoting discourse on cultural rights, fostering meaningful dialogues, and advancing interdisciplinary and decentralised research.
Throughout the year, our team has carried out multifarious projects, building connections with communities and cultures in Armenia, the region, and the EU. The longstanding collaboration with our Danish partners resulted in a co-curation of the “Armenia: Landscapes of Memories” exhibition together with Danish photographer Martin Thaulow. The exhibition, which opened in Bornholm, Denmark, as part of the "People's Summit" (Folkemødet) festival, touched upon the struggles of Armenian society in the aftermath of the Second Karabakh War.
Realising the crucial need to address conflicts within Armenian society in the post-war crisis, we dedicated ourselves to organising numerous meetings, mentorship programmes, discussions, and dialogue sessions with a particular focus on the active participation of Armenians forcibly displaced from Nagorno Karabakh.
The hardships and challenges are often shared across the entire region. Therefore, cooperation with neighbouring countries remained critically important to us. In this regard, we successfully implemented our annual Re-Lentus project focused on gender mainstreaming in Armenia and Georgia, organised the first Armenian-Georgian conference on cultural rights in Yerevan, participated in the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, and issued statements in support of our colleagues fighting for democracy in Georgia.
It is of utmost importance for us to advance the discourse on cultural rights and democratic values in Armenia. To this end, we dedicated all our efforts to sustaining our alternative educational programmes. This year, our annual “School of Complex Past” project focused on migration and forced displacement. Together with participants from local communities, Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh, and the diaspora, we explored complicated and sensitive issues to find connections between current challenges and traumatic historical events.
As a research-driven cultural organisation, we undertook and released several publications. Among those, we would like to particularly highlight“Kechut: Memory Under the Water”, “Balat: Living Together” and “Memory of the Body”each of which was conducted through an interdisciplinary approach combining memory studies, migration studies, gender studies, environmental studies, and cultural studies.
In parallel with our diverse projects and initiatives, we remained dedicated to supporting artists and cultural practitioners in Armenia, helping them achieve their creative endeavours, promoting the protection of their cultural rights, and fostering the development of their capacities and networks.
Whether through research projects, urban interventions, or the dissemination of statements, we have consistently engaged in advocacy for cultural rights, raising awareness about memory, green, gender, and spatial justice in Armenia, the region, and beyond.
As we look ahead to 2025, we are wholeheartedly grateful for all your love and support. Together, we will continue to work towards creating a more inclusive and democratic cultural landscape in Armenia and the region.
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Happy holidays to everyone,
Best wishes,
CSN Lab