Video

Fatin Farhat on cultural sector in the MENA region

Fatin Farhat, a Palestinian based cultural worker from Ramallah talks about art sector in Palestine and MENA region, as well as about RAWA, a bottom up funding initiative. Fatin is currently enrolled in the Cultural Policy program at Hildesheim University as a Ph.D., examining the potential of inviting new practices to grassroots cultural initiatives, while highlighting the potential role local governments can play in fostering community/citizen participation and cultural development in Palestine.

Video

Abdou Benattabou: Mutual support of small organizations

Abdou Benattabou is a part of Zankar 90, an association based in Tangier that works with small projects that need help in administration and logistics to begin their own projects.

News

Workshop in Beirut: How can solidarity funding encourage the vitality of contemporary arts in these uncertain times?

The workshop 24-28 September will be held in Hammana and Beirut and organised by ACT association in collaboration with Hammana Artist House.

Video

How can national systems supporting art move beyond the national framework?

Ane Alsløv and Peter Koch Gehlshøj from the Danish Arts Foundation talk about the support system for arts in Denmark, international work of their institution and new emerging models in the arts field in their context.

Blog

How to Promote the Value of Art in Social Fabric Affected by War

Our approach to a better understanding of the Value of art in social fabric was to discuss and bring up to the dialogue the narrative of the torn apart communities in war-zones and post conflict societies, how do we as cultural activists, artists and organizations, contribute in reviving an art scene in the midst of political chaos and lack of security, funding, and the disappearance of a cultural ecosystem?

Audio

Fair Governance: Where Are We Now, and Where Should We Be?

Fair governance is highly applicable subject of discussion within independent cultural organizations. It consists from set of values which, when applied to particular governing within a group, refer to how participants govern this group, what values they want to provide, but also open question self-governance, self-facilitation, the responsibility of each member. The group sets up different tools of fair governance. What is fairness and what does it mean not only in arts and culture, but also in a more global context of relations? How do we govern now, how can we govern in the future? Can fair governance exclude classical resources, such as funding?

Audio

Culture in the state of crisis- a conversation with representatives of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation

Just like all around the world, the COVID-19 outbreak has shaken the cultural sector in Ukraine, a country that has been struggling with an unstable political situation for a while now. The rise of cultural life after the Dignity Revolution of 2014, was soon accompanied by the establishment of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation - the state institution that introduces new mechanisms of funding for initiatives in the field of culture and creative industries. Thanks to the UCF, the non-governmental sector was not left to fend for itself during the pandemic, as the foundation took on the role of a crisis manager, trying to adapt quickly to the new realities.

Audio

Mophradat - reinventing of articulations, discourses and meanings

Krystel Khoury presents Mophradat, an art organization that seeks to create opportunities for artists from the Arab world - a loose geographical determinant to which they approach in its full diversity and complexity. Located between Brussels and Athens, Mophradat is developing an innovative approach to funding, commissioning, collaborating, and gathering.

Interview

Various Faces of Solidarity — An interview with Nike Jonah

Nike Jonah is a research fellow with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at University College London and is also the lead for the Pop Culture and Social Change initiative at Counterpoint Arts. She engages in questions of strategic development in the cultural sector and across creative industries. In the context of RESHAPE, she was the facilitator of the solidarity economies trajectory, where questions of how art and cultural projects can be supported for their potential and not for where they are coming from have been raised. In this conversation, we address how the concept of solidarity funding was unpacked, and how the different projects and prototypes potentially manifesting it emerged.

Zeitgeist

Art and Culture after Covid-19

Everyone seems to agree that the Covid-19 pandemic has a huge impact on the economy, social relations, politics, and culture. We’re nowhere near through this crisis yet, and alternative futures are already being promoted, others wait to ‘get back to normal’, while most people are too busy coping with the emergency. In this ferment of events and contestation, it’s valuable to be reminded of the bigger picture. This essay by Professor Justin O’Connor (University of South Australia) places the current situation of cultural organisations and workers in a historical context, reminding us of their developing relationship with the political economy of recent decades. It is also challenging because it asks what compromises have been made by cultural actors in pursuit of recognition and at what costs.

Zeitgeist

Agencies of Art: A Report on the Situation of Small and Medium-sized Art Centres in Denmark, Norway and Sweden

How can one fathom the implications and values of smaller arts institutions within the greater art ecosystem? One key aspect is their ground-breaking approach to relations between art and society, education, and the formation of public spheres. Another is their important role in local communities whilst maintaining a constant dialogue within the international arts context. But how can we create dialogue around the values that are being built – beyond visitor numbers and media coverage? What cooperative processes can be adopted so that artists and culture, small and large institutions, municipalities, regions, states, and federal politics all cooperate to encourage art’s potential?

Zeitgeist

ETMAC: The Extra-territorial Ministry of Arab Culture

At a time when Arab countries are bleeding away their creative capital with the departure, emigration, or exiling of pioneering intellectuals and artists, one wonders about the future of their practices and legacies. HaRaKa’s performance theorist and artist Adham Hafez and anthropologist and urbanist Adam Kucharski pose the following question: can the institution of the ministry of culture be rehabilitated to serve this new diffuse community of art producers and serve as a locus of cultural production outside of the traditional boundaries of the nation? Can the institution evolve to meet the needs of an artistic and cultural community that is, at least temporarily, extra-territorial? And can it help to rebuild shattered national institutions on artists’ terms?

Workshop

Workshop1: Solidarity funding

The workshop 24-28 September will be held in Hammana and Beirut and organised by ACT association in collaboration with Hammana Artist House.

Workshop

Workshop 1: Fair governance models

The first workshop in trajectory Fair governance models.

Workshop

Workshop in Potsdam: How can we model economic & funding systems towards more solidarity?

The second workshop in trajectory Solidarity funding.

Discussion

Cancelled // Domino: Independent Art and Activism Focusing on LGBTIQ Minorities

Domino is an NGO dedicated to independent art and activism focusing on LGBTIQ minorities and women's rights. Domino produces several festivals in Croatia and internationally and commissions / co-produces 35 - 40 artistic projects per year, is publishing 1 - 2 books per year, has a regular queer film program once a month and organise arts management and curating educations and seminars.