Let's shape IETM Brussels programme
The programme of IETM Brussels (23-26 November) is well on its way and we would love to hear your ideas about how to shape it. If you were at IETM Bucharest, feel free to share with us your suggestions how we could bring the themes discussed at the meeting to the next plenary and further explore and develop them. Or perhaps there is another angle to approach a topic, or experts to invite, that could shed a complete new light on the issue?
If you haven't attended IETM Bucharest, you are still very welcome to throw you ideas about potential topics, speakers and moderators. You can also share any articles, videos, publications, links, etc. that you think may be useful for shaping the content of the meeting.
I see that Arts Flanders is collecting examples of projects that strengthen the position of the artist in Europe. Will they have a slot in Brussels to share the results of their survey?
After leading a panel discussion about Curation in Bucharest I found that many people were interested in exploring how curation can engage diverse artistic practices and audiences. I suggest that IETM is still quite"monocromatic" and that you should invite more persons curating from a position of diversity to participate in panels and to present their curation and audience development thoughts and ideas. I heard a wonderful speaker from Cambodia yesterday at ISPA who you might want to consider.
One general remark that I have is that IETM meetings generate a lot of waste. I think the network should set the example for professionals and try to be more eco-friendly. The meeting brochures for example take a lot of paper and energy to be printed and after 3 days of use go straight to the bin.
And in relation to the programme, I'd love to see some hands-on sessions with practical advice and examples on how venues and touring companies can reduce their foot-print. This should actually be a recurring working group in IETM meetings where participants can share best practises and set plan of actions
Dear Olof,
IETM feels concerned by climate change and does its best to be eco-responsible and reduce the footprint of its events, from getting rid of disposable material to compensating the carbon emissions of the participants' flights.
As for tackling the topic, it has been done in our publications:
https://www.ietm.org/en/publications/fresh-perspectives-4-art-for-the-p…
and in our meetings in partnership with Julie's Bicycle:
http://www.juliesbicycle.com/latest/news/10819-ietm-creative-climate-le…
The next step now is to embed ecology in all the topics.
Dear Heather,
IETM is aware of what you point at, and we are putting a lot of effort in being more representative of the actual Western and European societies, to which our membership belongs so far. As you may have noticed, the meeting in Bucharest brought the diversity of the IETM membership to the front stage. Nevertheless, our membership, modeled on the performing arts field, is not diverse enough, but for its international composition.
We would be very glad to invite the speaker from Cambodia your recommend, if the budget permits. By the way, there has been several attemps in the past years to connect with Asia through a series of meetings. However, we might be more interested in inviting the performing arts professionals, with an asian - or any other foreign - background, living and working in Europe, in order to provide a fair reprensentation of our societies.
Dear Victor and Olaf,
ABOUT WAST AND ENVIRONMENT
in Budapest meeting I took part to a group of work which was deeply concerning about problems of mobility and the freaking out in "calls" concerning mobility of artists. The focus was the negative effects that mobility has on climate and one proposal of this group for Amsterdam meeting (I am not sure has been carried on) was to not take flights to the meeting.
What about a call for "alternative ways" to reach Brussels for the meeting? Collective cars, green ways, caravans?
Which could also be a wonderful and possibly viral way of a social media story telling.
r
Personally I was interested in the topic about making IETM and members more inclusive. I would propose as an expertise or for her experience of artistic life Rita Mazza, Deaf or Native Signing Artist, Artistic Director of our Festival of Silence, which collaborated in the creation of tv series, festival, artistic and learning process for sign language and inclusive groups.
How you feel about it?
r
Since we are pretty much new members I dont know whether you have already treated this topic or not, I would like to know whether statistics have been done on how much money it is actually reverting on the artists and how much it goes on keeping up the state structures. It feels to me that at least here in the south of Spain most of the money put into culture goes to people that are civil servants but really small percentange goes actually to the artists. (I dont know whether this is true to other places, but it can happen that we might be paying for a salary in a place where only one or two performances happen in a year scope and where this civil servants tell you that they have no BUDGET at all) To me this is a very innefficiant way to make cultural politics but at least here it seems like no one wants to address this, analize it and draw the pertinent conclussions. I would appreatiate it if you already have address this to let me know where can I find the info.
I would like to propose some issues to discuss, that I believe are relevant in an international and transborder arts scene;
The role of the international producer:
- how to communicate and learn from each others network and experience of international touring. We could definitely be stronger together.
The role of the programming curator:
- how to reach out and find the gemstone performances and develop new and interesting platforms that attract other venues, artists and producers from the international field.
The artist dilemma:
- how to present a performance both artistically as well as promotionally interesting – carrying two parrallell thoughts in developing a piece, being an artist and being a sales person.
I propose these themes briefly as I, in my every day work as a producer, find these issues of great importance. They are discussed often amongst artists and producers and I believe they will have to be discussed as long as performing art is being produced.
Hi Ricardo, I like the idea of car sharing to get to IETM meetings (even though being based in Sweden doesn't always make it possible).
Perhaps we could try to use this forum to reach other members and to organise ourselves?
Dear Riccardo,
IETM is really interested in inclusion and we are actually planning on having discussions about how to make the Meetings and the network more inclusive. This recommandation is thus very welcome!
Is there a way you could put us in contact with Rita Mazza? We would be very glad to talk with her and maybe invite her to share her experience and knowledge during the meeting, if the budget permits.
Since you already work on this maybe you could help us finding resources to make sure she can come; do you know Italian organisations providing support we could contact?
On the topic of waste and environment, car sharing is a great idea and you can of course create a forum on the subject for Brussels Meeting!
Proposition by Kristin Rogghe, KVS city dramaturg:
Topic: decolonize the arts: what, why, how
The French collective “décoloniser les arts” has set the example of opening up the debate on a topic that is often wandering around in the performing arts world as an invisible elephant in the room… They have formulated a list of questions that point out the need to decolonize ourselves, our artistic practices and institutions: https://www.facebook.com/decoloniserlesarts/posts/1751631001725050.
We feel that this topic is particularly relevant to discuss in relation to the theme of the IETM meeting and in the city of Brussels where it is held.
Following on Riccardo's thread about inclusion and diversity:
- If you're looking for deaf curators, the festival Clin D'Oeil in France might be a good place to ask: http://www.clin-doeil.eu/festival/
- I'm wondering if a training session might be useful? A half day format as they often are at IETM, a crash-course in making the arts accessible to all, what tools and resources are out there to help venues, programmers and artists in developing this thinking practically? Shape Arts in the UK deliver this kind of training. It might be interesting to combine 2 trainers from 2 different countries to compare cultural practices too?
- I wonder if an interesting approach to diversity would be featuring the breadth of differences in artists' careers and paths, pointing out barriers that have existed for them and the achievements they had made. Unusual practices and paths, some that may combine day jobs with arts practices? I'm thinking Austria/UK artist Noemi Laekmaier would have an interesting insight for this for example. This conversation could feature a range of diverse voices and identities...and a useful way to talk about what encourages this diversity in our sector...or not...
After more thinking, I wanted to add some thoughts to follow up on my previous comment - that for artists who have identities that ‘tick boxes’ (diversity boxes, that is, when it comes to support/positive discrimination) the issue is (or should be) around choice - when might the individual wishes to define as a disabled artist and when might they just want access but no label? What if a curator/programmer has different views to the artist about how they should be identified/labelled? I’m really interested in this and its link or not across other diversity areas too - and its link to invisible/visible impairment.
Hello Victor,
I was wondering whether there will be a section like the newsround one in Valencia where people could present their ideas and projects. If so, when will it be possible to send our propositions.
Sonia
Federation for European Storytelling
Hello Sonia,
There will indeed be a newsround session in Brussels, you can already apply here to present your project.
Best,
Sephora
Thank you Sephora!!! I hadn´t realized that it was already posted. We will indeed do so-
Sonia