In June, we officially selected eleven remarkable young artists who will commence the Master’s Degree Programme in January 2012. Out of 62 applicants, a 30% increase compared to 2011, we invited 21 students for an interview. The competition was fierce and the selection process therefore not easy. We used four main criteria:

1. The candidate’s portfolio and CV: what has the candidate done, how talented or potentially talented is he/she in his/her field and has that talent already been recognized?

2. The candidate’s research topic: how interesting and relevant is it, both for the candidate and for the professional community at large?

3. The candidate’s openness to input of a diverse nature, his/her capacity to reflect and willingness to change and reconsider his/her plans if necessary.

4. Will the selected candidates form an interesting group: diverse, complementary and potentially supportive of and inspiring for one another?
 
In the end we selected eleven candidates to form next year’s group, who bring a wonderful mixture of professional backgrounds and nationalities. Five women and six men from the Netherlands, Indonesia, Columbia, Brazil, Finland, Italy, Romania, Greece, Hungary and Israel. Many have a degree in film, others in visual arts and one of them is a theatre director. They all have professional experience but their fields of interest are diverse, although some share an interest in alternative modes of narration and in the possible artistic or aesthetic consequences of recent research in neuroscience. We’re looking forward to welcoming them next January.