Product Description

A wonderfully quiet and atmospheric artist residency and Finnish-West African culture centre by the Guinea Bay in Grand-Popo, Benin. Includes nine well equipped and clean artist residency rooms, two museums, a multifunctional space, library, concert podium and a small sculpture workshop that can be used by those staying with us. The area is a real hotspot for cultural heritage around the traditional voodoo religion.

Villa Karo was founded in 2000 by a Finnish writer and has by now hosted over 650 professionals from all fields of art & culture. Now also researchers are welcome! Normally, entry into the residency comes through a tight selection process and minimum stay is 4 weeks, but since we have some availability, we are opening up a few rooms up for the art & culture community to use more freely, simply to cover our running costs in the difficult financial situation due to rising prices in West Africa. Thanks to the high standard of West African and Finnish professionals normally selected for residency, the conversations around breakfast table are simply world-class!

Included in residency is a comprehensive package of services: a thorough pre-travel info package, professional support by our residency coordinator and our museum curator; interpretation services, excellent food prepared by our chef, weekly cleaning & laundry etc. We can also help by organising fixers for your project, transport to/from the airport, excursions to cultural attractions etc. In short: there is a team of 15 staff on-site, making sure you have a once-in-a-lifetime residency experience!

Apart from the physical facilities, we offer also an array of activities in our lively culture centre: 8 exhibitions per year incl. with resident artists, monthly free concerts, weekly cinema evenings, around 40 workshops per year for children and youth (literary cafés, ceramics, environmental awareness, English classes and various handicrafts).

Send us your workplan to: hakemukset@villakaro.org !

PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE https://villakaro.org for more information, incl. more pictures of rooms and premises!