NICA artist development starts its sixth funding cycle in September with five new musicians and one curator.

NICA artist development offers outstanding musicians from North Rhine-Westphalia who work in the fields of jazz and contemporary music, a platform to raise their artistic profile and advance their careers. The grant is initially awarded for one year and may be extended for up to three years.

The artist support program, which is based at the European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music at the Stadtgarten in Cologne and receives annual funding of 420,000 euros from the state, began in 2019 as a pilot project and has been receiving institutional funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2022.

Following nominations by selected event organizers, programmers, music journalists, and other cultural professionals from North Rhine-Westphalia, the artists living in NRW were selected by a panel of experts.

We are pleased to announce the following participants as NICA artists of the 6th cohort in September:

• Annie Bloch (organ, guitar, voice *1994 | she/her)
• Parissa Charghi (curator, cultural producer *1983 | she/her)
• Victor Fox (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet *2000 | he/him)
• Florian Herzog (bass, curation *1989 | he/him)
• Tabea Kind (bass, piano, voice *1999 | she/her)
• Kateryna Kravchenko (voice *1999 | she/her)

Further information and press material on the NICA artists and the program itself can be found on the website www.nica-artistdevelopment.de.