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Visual artsJuan de Nieves‘We need institutions that want to create artists’ residencies’PAULA ACHIAGAEl Cultural 19/02/2014Scheduled for Friday 21 February, the first of the professional meetings arranged by ARCP as parallel activities that complement the fair will deal with the subject of artists’ residencies and is coordinated by Juan de Nieves (La Coruña, 1964). Recently back from Rupert in Vilnius, Lithuania, a centre focused above all on residency programmes, of which he has been in charge for the past months, the curator is all for residencies as a way of getting artists started on their careers. His intention, like that of Acción Cultural Española, which sponsors the meeting and is one of the public institutions most actively involvedin mobility programmes through the PICE, is to stimulate institutions’ interest in organising, extending and, if possible, standardising artists’ residencies, which are ‘practically non-existent in our country’, he points out.Indeed, except for initiatives such as Hangar in Barcelona, Spain does not have many projects for encouraging foreign artists’ stays in our country. ‘There are specific programmes like El Ranchito at Matadero, which is getting better and better, but it’s incredible that there’s no specific, permanent centre in Madrid that welcomes artists’, explains Juan de112Results ’14