As a dedication to the 10-year anniversary of the Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, celebrated and remembered over the past 12 months, attention was given to investigate the very origin of this occasion – the institution itself and the building that houses it. Throughout the year, Eglė Trimailovaitė and Milda Januševičiūtė started recording the memories and impressions of persons involved in creating, shaping and contemplating NAC as we know it. They still continue this work with the aim to publish a digital collection of interviews.

Although in these tense and unpredictable times we are facing at the moment, last year seems like an ancient past, NAC's anniversary year 2021 was quite memorable, featuring the presentation of our first accomplished artists' commissions: Agnė Jokšė's Unconditional Love and Anastasia Sosunova's Bird House. In addition to the residency programme hosting 43 local and international artists, in the summer, a flock of Skudde sheep joined the programme together with artists and collectives as shepherds in a special Shepherd's Residency, a project by Laura Garbštienė. In 2021, NAC also presented three new publications: The Spectral Forest, a comprehensive bilingual catalogue of the eponymous exhibition in 2020, and the first two tomes of Neringa Forest Architecture books for the youngest audiences, published by Kirvarpa. The summer programme also included the opening of the exhibition and a travelling screening programme Sensible Grounds: Tuning into the Rhythms of the Chronic,curated by Azar Mahmoudian. Throughout this same year, NAC continued facilitating artistic productions on and off-site, hosting Neringa Forest Architecture Tours, welcoming local and international academic communities to seminars and intensives, and engaging in many other activities making for another vibrant year in the institution's history.

None of this, however, would have been possible without the dedication, participation and support of the NAC community. Our gratitude goes to everyone who has kept this artistic ecosystem thriving and expanding over the past year and all those before. We thank the students and tutors of Vilnius Academy of Arts who make this place an active educational and training site. We are grateful to the local and international artists whose ideas echo in the house, the region and beyond. And all those who helped to build this site from scratch and maintain it everyday, thank you for your time, determination, confidence and brilliance. We are looking forward to seeing you in Nida and keeping this connection going for years to come!