Call for Applications: LCCA Summer School 2026
The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) announces an open call for its annual Summer School, which in 2026 will take place in Madona, a town in the Vidzeme region of northern Latvia, from 6–10 August. The programme combines lectures, workshops, guided tours, discussions, and creative practices to foster a collaborative and inclusive environment. It will focus on “Re-Enchanted Worlds: Contemporary Practices and Traditional Knowledge.” Deadline for applications: June 12 2026.
Who Should Apply?
The LCCA Summer School is open to early-career artists, art historians, humanities and social science scholars, curators, and cultural studies researchers. MA and PhD students are particularly encouraged to apply.
Programme Overview
Many have claimed that the modern world is stripped of presence, wonder, and meaning – it has become disenchanted. In response to this thought, we call for exploring creative practices of re-enchantment. Herby, we invite you to address subconscious experiences, archetypes, mythologies, and alternative systems of knowledge. It might be both through an emphasis on affect, awe, and the sublime, or intuition, ritual, and embodied ways of knowing. These approaches echo mythic traditions in which humans are not separate observers of the world but part of a larger whole: nature, cosmos, spirit, restoring a sense of connection and belonging.
The programme is focused on traditional knowledge as inspiration for contemporary creative practice and as a vehicle for (re)enchantment. It will cover topics like resonance with surroundings and embeddedness in more-than-human worlds, contemporary meanings of ancient myths, artistic quests into the underworld of culture and consciousness, and will offer interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches on how to think about them.
We will explore how contemporary artists, theorists, and researchers respond to the disenchanted condition and how creative and embodied practices can reopen space for mystery, intuition, and imagination. Here, the art may serve as a site of re-enchantment where knowledge is felt, sensed, and experienced rather than merely explained, and the location becomes a terrain of encounter where participants can attune to stories, materials, and presences that exceed the rational and the visible.
Application Process
Participation in the Summer School is free of charge; however, participants must cover a 200 EUR contribution towards accommodation and catering costs.
To participate, please fill out the application form HERE and enclose a motivation letter.
The deadline for applications is June 12 2026. We will respond to applicants by June 22. For any questions regarding the application, please get in touch with Andra Silapētere at silapetere@lcca.lv
Organisers & supporters
The curators of the Summer School programme are Andra Silapētere (LCCA) and the UNART team (Toms Ķencis, Jana Kukaine, Ieva Melgalve and Maija Rudovska).
The LCCA Summer School is organised in partnership with the University of Latvia Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art through the Latvian Council of Science funded project “Contemporary Art and Folklore: Unlocking the Underworld (UNART)” (lzp-2024/1-0479) and in cooperation with Madona Local History and Art Museum. Supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation.