The Alpine Fellowship is a charitable foundation that supports, commissions and showcases artists, writers, academics and playwrights. It was founded in 2013 by artist Alan J Lawson and Jacob Burda.

The Symposium

The focal point of activities is an annual four day symposium. The symposium 'draws together participants from academia, the arts and business' and they have been held on the themes of 'home', 'representation', 'the self-portrait', 'ephemera' and 'landscape'. Fellows, "can attend the symposium by competing in one of the different prize categories: drama, writing and visual arts." Previous guests have included playwrights

Jessica Swale Jessica Swale is a British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, ''Blue Stockings,'' premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus ...

Polly Stenham Polly Stenham (born 16 July 1986) is an English playwright known for her play ''That Face'', which she wrote when she was 19 years old. Background Stenham was born and raised in London. She attributes her love of theatre to her father as he to ...

, actor

Charity Wakefield Charity Rose Wakefield is an English actress. Her appearances include roles in ''Sense & Sensibility'' (2008), ''Casualty 1900s'' (2008–2009), ''Wolf Hall'' and ' (2015), '' Close to the Enemy'' (2016), ', ''Genius'' and ''Bounty Hunters'' (20 ...

, philosophers

Simon May Simon May (born 15 August 1944) is a British composer. He has composed many British television theme tunes, including ''EastEnders'' and ''Howards' Way'', and the music for the 1988 film ''The Dawning''. Biography Born in Devizes and a pupi ...

and Sir Roger Scruton, the novelist

Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...

, the poets,

Ruth Padel Ruth Sophia Padel FRSL FZS is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author, known for her poetic explorations of migration, both animal and human, and her involvement with classical music, wildlife conservation and Greece, ancient and modern. ...

Gillian Clarke Gillian Clarke (born 8 June 1937) is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales. Life Gillian Clarke was born on 8 J ...

and

John Burnside John Burnside FRSL FRSE (born 19 March 1955) is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O'Brien) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book (''Black Cat ...

, film maker

Luc Jacquet Luc Jacquet (born 5 December 1967) is a French film director and screenwriter. He wrote and directed the film ''March of the Penguins'', which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2005 and received a nomination for the Writers Guild of A ...

and art historians, including

Andrew Graham-Dixon Andrew Michael Graham-Dixon (born 26 December 1960) is a British art historian and broadcaster. Life and career Early life and education Andrew Graham-Dixon is a son of the barrister Anthony Philip Graham-Dixon (1929–2012), Q.C., and (M ...

. Symposiums have been held in Switzerland, Scotland, and Italy. In 2015 The Alpine Fellowship endowed the ‘Alpine Fellows’ programme at

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

ensuring financial support for students pursuing interdisciplinary research at the Graduate Level at NYU. Alpine Fellows 2016 in the Palladian Refectory

Alpine Fellows 2016 in the Palladian Refectory

Past events

In 2014, the Fellowship discussed the theme of 'representation' with contributions from the realms of academia, music and the visual arts. Philosophers emphasized the difficulties and dangers inherent in the subjectivist approach that regards the world as the 'mere' representation of the subject. The annual symposium was held at the

Fondazione Giorgio Cini The Giorgio Cini Foundation (''Italian: Fondazione Giorgio Cini''), or just Cini Foundation, is a cultural foundation founded 20 April 1951 in memory of Giorgio Cini, an Italian entrepreneur who died in August 1949. History The Foundation is loca ...

, on the island of San Giorgio, Venice, in the years 2015 through 2018. The 2015, symposium convened over the theme 'authorittrato - self-expression in the age of instant communication'. Participants tried to trace the historical developments that occurred since

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...

's self-portrait in 1500 to today's 'selfie-culture'. In 2016, the Fellowship convened on the topic of ‘Ephemera’ and the nature of time. Philosophers

Luciano Floridi Luciano Floridi (; born 16 November 1964) is an Italian people, Italian and British people, British philosopher. He holds a double appointment as professor of philosophy and ethics of information at the University of Oxford, Oxford Internet In ...

and

Mark Wrathall Mark Wrathall (born 1965) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is considered a leading interpreter of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Wrathall is featured in Tao ...

spoke to underline the way our self-understanding is inextricably bound up with our understanding of time. In 2017, the Fellowship discussed the theme of '

Landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

'. Amongst other things, virtual reality pioneer Nonny de la Pena gave a talk on 'virtual landscapes' that stirred much debate. In 2018, the theme was '

Childhood A child (plural, : children) is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers ...

'. In 2019, the theme was '

Identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...

' and the symposium was hosted at Fjällnäs,

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. The 2020 and 2021 symposiums were both cancelled due to the pandemic. In 2022, the theme was '

Freedom Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...

' and speakers included

Esther Perel Esther Perel (born 1958) is a Belgian-American psychotherapist, known for her work on human relationships. Perel promoted the concept of "erotic intelligence" in her book ''Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence'' (2006), which has ...

Yuval Harari Yuval Noah Harari ( he, יובל נח הררי ; born 1976) is an Israeli historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers '' Sapiens: A Brief History ...

and Clare Chambers (Philosopher) .

Prizes

The Alpine Fellowship offers prizes in Academic Writing, Theatre, Poetry, Writing, and Visual Arts. These are aimed at supporting emerging artists, writers and playwrights from around the world.

Advisory board

The Advisory Board includes

Katherine Rundell Katherine Rundell (born 1987) is an English author and academic. She is the author of ''Rooftoppers'', which in 2015 won both the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was short-listed for t ...

, Andrew Huddleston,

Nell Leyshon Nell Leyshon is a British writer whose work alternates between prose, stage and radio drama. She was born and grew up in Somerset, and spent half of her childhood in Glastonbury, and the other half in a small farming village on the edge of the So ...

, Mike Lesslie,

Iain Martin Iain James Martin (born 2 October 1971) is a Scottish political commentator, author and public speaker. He writes a weekly column for ''The Times'' and is co-founder, editor and publisher of ''Reaction'' - a news site providing analysis and opi ...

and Sukhdev Sandhu.

References

External links

* http://www.alpinefellowship.com * *{{cite web, url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKxV8b0LTlc, title=Andrew Graham Dixon. The Spiritual in Art, last=Alpine Fellowship, date=30 October 2016, via=YouTube * https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2019/03/jacob-burda-s-diary-point-la-importance-being-heard-and-victory-over Charities based in London 2013 establishments in England Arts organizations established in 2013 Arts in England