About the programme
Sleeping Beauties is a multi-residency project designed and developed by EUNIC Romania. It involves six cultural institutions operating in Romania: the British Council, the Czech Centre, the Goethe Institute, the Cervantes Institute, the Polish Institute and Fundația9, each engaged in supporting one residency.
EUNIC – European Union National Institutes for Culture – is Europe’s network of national cultural institutes and organisations, with 39 members from all EU Member States and associate countries.
The project was framed by this consortium of European partners, in collaboration with curator Ilinca Păun Constantinescu - PhD, President & Founder of Ideilagram Association, Co-founder of the Architecture Office Ideogram Studio, Lecturer at Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning Bucharest, Department of Theory and History of Architecture, coordinator of MuzA – the Museum of Architecture in Romania and its itinerant national programme.
Already an established artist residency programme of the EUNIC Romania cluster, Sleeping Beauties is the third edition following Flowing Streams (which explored water as a social connector) and Reclaiming Post-Industrial Futures (which focused on post-industrial heritage). To see how last year’s residencies unfolded, we invite you to watch this video documentary:
Local context
Romania’s balneary resorts, once carefully designed microcosms of health, leisure, and collective life, stand today between memory and renewal. Built around mineral waters, therapeutic practices, parks, and public life, these spa towns shaped landscapes, communities, and everyday cultures across the country. From imperial-era resorts and early modern park-cities to socialist infrastructures of care and seaside tourism complexes, they played a major role in Romania’s cultural and urban history.
After 1989, many entered a long period of decline. Buildings were abandoned, treatment facilities closed, public spaces deteriorated, and coherent systems of care were fragmented through privatisation and the lack of long-term vision. Yet beneath this visible erosion lies a remarkable and still active potential: architectural heritage, extraordinary natural resources, layered memories, and local organizations imagining new futures for these places. In the absence of large-scale top-down solutions, local initiatives are the ones creating new models of regeneration through research, culture, restoration, advocacy, and community engagement.
Today, these resorts are increasingly being rediscovered not only as heritage sites, but as living cultural landscapes. Their value lies in historical buildings and wellbeing, but also in their capacity to inspire sustainable ways of thinking about ecology, public space and tourism. The selected places reflect the richness and diversity of this landscape: the Austro-Hungarian elegance of Borsec, the Roman and imperial legacy of Băile Herculane, the socialist modernism of Amara, the layered seaside development of Eforie and Techirghiol, and the early 20th-century “park-city” model of Băile Govora. Together, they form a palimpsest of architectural styles, planning ideologies, and relationships between nature and the built environment.
Like in the sleeping beauty metaphor, what appears dormant is waiting to be reawakened. These resorts are no longer remnants of a bygone era, but fertile places for collective imagination towards sustainable futures.
Sleeping Beauties is a project that works with representative balneary resorts and local communities across Romania, offering a broad view of the diversity, heritage, and renewed potential of these remarkable cultural landscapes:
- BORSEC – a mountain resort shaped by Austro-Hungarian heritage, mineral waters, and distinctive wooden villa architecture, animated today by community-led cultural action;
- BĂILE HERCULANE – one of Europe’s oldest thermal resorts, where Roman and imperial heritage meets ecological and civic revitalisation along the Cerna river;
- AMARA – a modernist spa town where socialist-era architecture of care, collective memory, and active treatment infrastructure remain visible and relevant;
- EFORIE & TECHIRGHIOL – Black Sea resorts where interwar heritage, seaside modernism, mass tourism, and contemporary cultural initiatives overlap;
- BĂILE GOVORA – an early 20th-century park-city where architecture, vegetation, and therapeutic culture form a unique landscape of care.
The programme is an invitation to explore these remarkable places and their layered histories, to connect with local initiatives and communities and to engage with organisations working across heritage preservation, architecture, archival research, cultural programming, ecology, and community development.
Through artistic, spatial, performative, or research-based practices, participants are invited to contribute to the ongoing renewal of these towns and to rethink heritage as a resource, care as a collective practice, and balneary resorts as laboratories for future ways of living.
British Council residency - Băile Govora
The residency in Băile Govora is organised by the British Council in partnership with , as local host. It is open to applicants from the UK and will take place in Băile Govora from 7-20 September 2026.
Studiogovora was established in 2019 by two architects whose diploma projects focused on the evolution and heritage of Băile Govora. The initiative has since grown into an interdisciplinary laboratory for the town’s cultural heritage, where research meets action and care for the past informs future-oriented visions. Bringing together architects, art historians, cultural managers, and communication specialists - some with personal roots in Govora, others drawn to it over time - the team works through restoration projects, public space interventions, advocacy, education, and community engagement.
The residency in Băile Govora sits under the umbrella of Making Matters: Circular Cultures, the European arm of Making Matters - British Council's global programme that aims to foster a global dialogue around circular design. Within this context, Băile Govora’s history of decline alongside its ongoing regeneration makes it a fitting site for exploring circular thinking, where heritage, reuse, and regeneration are closely interwoven. As a former balneary resort in transition, it also offers a space for creative professionals to meet, exchange ideas and practices, and contribute to broader discussions on sustainability and circularity.
Who can apply: We welcome designers, makers, researchers, and interdisciplinary practitioners from the UK interested in spa towns, the park movement, and cultures of wellbeing. We particularly encourage projects engaging with material heritage, spatial design, and the relationship between architecture, landscape, and healing environments. Govora can be explored as a historic “park-city”, where vegetation, water, and architecture were conceived together as a landscape of care.
For detailed information about the wider framework of the programme, we invite you to explore the open-call document available for download below.
Open call details
Who can apply: Interdisciplinary and performative artists, architects (including landscape architects and historians), filmmakers, researchers, designers and makers, community organisers, and socially engaged practitioners interested in heritage, wellbeing, ecology, public space, and the regeneration of balneary resorts.
Eligibility: citizens or permanent residents from Czech Republic, UK, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Romania
Period of residencies: Two (2) weeks at various dates between July to September 2026 (download the open call document for detailed information)
Place of residencies: balneary resorts across Romania
Submission deadline: Thursday, 21 May 2026 (23:59 EET)
Information
Full details about each residency and the open call can be found in the open-call document available for download below.
If you have any questions please contact us at roprojects@britishcouncil.org
