Topics
The atelier was built around following topics (topics will be further collected from the online alumni working group and on the basis of the expectations of the participants).
- Sustainability - What is the Economic Impact? How can we build a more resilient eco system for the arts? How can we take care of the people working in the arts? What are the different funding possibilities.
- Artist and Arts – How to prioritize this most vulnerable group with specific focus on individual artists. Development of solidarity mechanisms to protect individual artists and festivals. The mental well-being of artists.
- Responsibility - It is not only about survival, what is our duty, our public function? Towards our audiences, artists, society?
- Impact on curation - Choices / arts creation and formats
- Audience development – How to regain the confidence of the audience? Will people still want to gather in the same way? Are any post – conflict/ post- social trauma strategies useful in this crisis?
- Digital world – going online? - The social aspect to this. The digital divide. Safety and security issues. How to monetize digital art? Ethics related to this online world.
- Freedom of speech and Mobility – International travel. Limitations on mobility and freedom.
- Climate and environmental impact – How to work internationally with less impact on the environment? How to produce and create work?
- Opportunities and Threats – What are the silver linings? How can we transform certain aspects in society from this experience to create a fairer and more equal world? What can the role of art, artists and festivals be in this? What are the dangers? Which freedoms are at stake? Can festivals be places of resistance?
- Contextualising the crisis – looking at it from geographical, economical and socially different perspectives and adapting strategies to answer specific needs.
The Atelier was co-created with alumni: an alumni steering group with representation from each continent co-developed the workshop.
Format
Through the unique life-long learning programmes in the arts festivals context, The Festival Academy brings together an enormous variety of creative minds: individual actors to be upskilled and informed about the state of play of the world today by experts and through peer-to-peer learning, who are given a time out to reflect critically on the role of festivals in today’s world, infused by people of different backgrounds and perspectives to challenge and provoke our thinking or the way we do things.
In general:
Work in two phases taking into account different time zones and different circumstances:
- Regionally – what are the specific impacts of COVID-19 in each region
- Globally – an online conference/seminar/series of seminars where learnings from each are shared, and then collated – the common threads, the differences, what it means for all of us, what it means for some of us
In detail:
- 14-15 June - Plenary sessions with keynote, presentations by experts on the topic from different perspectives
- 16 June – Seminars + working groups on specific topics – one on one mentoring and individual work
- 17 June - Plenary bringing back results of the working groups
- 18 June - Seminars + working groups on specific topics – one on one mentoring and individual work
- 19-20 June- Plenary sessions and presentations gathering ideas/results collected in the different working groups
Please find here a detailed timeline of the programme.
The sessions included:
- Informal moments: an apero together/ or a dinner where everyone cooks a special dish from home
- Play – movement, games to break through the digital boredom
- One on one sessions and mentoring
- Free movement – chat rooms for informal networking
- Timing: plenary sessions no longer than 3 hours with a break in between
- Taking into account different time zones – schedule plenary sessions/ some of them recorded so people can see it at different times