Archive för Communtiy Art Lab

Last Friday (November 30) Belgrade’s first one-year mentorprogram, Creative Mentoring, was launched at Gallery 12 HUB. Eleven creatives together with there matched mentors gathered for a Kick-off setting off the program.

The ETC-group, formed together with the Swedish Embassy in fall 2011, gather eleven cultural and social entrepreneurs in Belgrade with high ambition to start, build, and pursue their initiatives in and around Serbia within their different professions. The group decided to start a program for mentoring being inspired by the idea of exchange of knowledge and experience which was the base in the Creative Society–project run by the Swedish Embassy last fall.

In April 2012 the group started the discussion around mentorship in a workshop held by Nätverkstan, which followed by a study trip to Sweden, many meetings, a ”dreamlist” of possible mentors, and finally asking high-profile individuals to be mentors for a year.

And last Friday the formal Kick-off set off this interesting project!

Read more of the workshop in Belgrade last April here. Read also the plan for Creative Mentoring here: Kreativno mentorstvo – opis projektan.

Jan Inge Reilstad was together with artist Jörgen Svensson curating the art project Neighbourhood secrets during Stavanger European Capital of Culture in 2008. In the project eight artists from different parts of the world were invited to be in dialogue with Stavanger and Sandnes over a period of twenty months. The results were eight very different art projects as intervention in public space and part of city development.

Using art in city development raises questions of the role of the artist. What is your role as an artist? Can the result of a social process be called art? Jeanne Van Heeswijk, one of the artists in the project, was matched to work with Stavanger Hospital. They did a TV-soap, directed and performed by the staff at the hospital. The artist’s role was mainly to role the wheel chairs, taking care of ad hoc practical matters.

Nicholas Bourriaud puts forward in his essay Ustabile Forbindelser (Unstable Relations) in the book describing the Stavanger projects, a change in this relational and social art. A change that was set to the specific date 9/11. After the attack on the twin towers, he reasons that the art went from relational to more radical.

Within the EU, the discussions are going warm on how to make cities and regions more creative. In the Green Paper on the potential of the cultural and creative industries put forward this spring, ideas and incentives are put forward on how to do. One suggestion is: Read this book.

”Nabologashemmeligheter. Kunsten som byprosess ” (forlagetpress.no), edited by Jan Inge Reilstad. Look into Koro, Public Art in Norway. And for more ideas on city development and art look here.

On a café in San Francisco close to Union Square, in a rest between meetings with cultural organisations and Artists, the Artist Jörgen Svensson together with a few of us from Nätverkstan started a discussion on how Artistic competence could be an asset for city development. It was June 2008 and the European Commission were assigning the coming year as the year of creativity and innovation. The question intriguing us was: What boosts creativity? And how can an Artist’s competence be used in real life challenges, not only as an Artistic project, but as an asset for city developers? The project Community Art Lab took form.

The idea is simple: Put together people with different competencies to create a creative process which will enable new perspectives and ideas to form. This will become a resource for city development and innovative ideas. In this project we want to have local authorities, Artists, Art University and other expertise working together. The process is led by an Artist, and starts by the city authorities presenting a real challenge they are dealing with. All participants in the process are equally important for creativity to take form; the working method is to work in a genuine and long-term cooperation in a group of the different competencies, and through the process created catalyze ideas and find alternative solutions to challenges.

The project start with a five day Lab in the city with the partners involved. The starting point is the presentation by city authorities and where the invited group are seen as an asset to find alternative solutions and action plans. An intense five working days in a Lab-form starts. The process continues over time, between three to six months. A process leader leads the Lab and is a guide and mentor in the continuing work. The Lab-form is flexible and new competence and expertise can be added as the work proceeds.  Read more of the project in the outline: community-art-laboratory_090603.

To read more of the study trip to San Francisco, look under Category with the same name. A quick look can be done on ”Thought on the road” and ”Public art and entrepreneurship” . The democracy project the South Bank Process in Göteborg, can be found on ”Transformation: from Warehouse to Cultural Center” and ”Democracy projects”. Read also about the Encatc Working Group ”Creative Entrepreneurship and Education”. Also read about the Artistic group Berlin, working with process as a method, and also the project Art and Politics in Västra Götaland.

The European network Encatc is at this moment putting the last touch to the programme planning for 2009. It’s a programme full of activities, networking and sharing of knowledge. The working group ”Creative Entrepreneurship and Education in Cultural Life” starts the year in Barcelona, Spain, in the middle of January. We start with combining a seminar held by Universitat de Barcelona on innvoation and creativity – yes, it’s a way to start the EU year of ”Innovation and Creativity” – with working group discussions. The programme will soon be posted on the Encatc website.

The idea with the working groups is to share knowledge and experience among professionals within different areas. The working group on entrepreneurship plan to do several different things during the year such as study visits, conference in Chicago invited by our American colleagues, the project Community Art Lab and the web.  Sharing of knowledge is important, but perhaps more so inspiration. Inspiration can take you far, and is a factor for innovative ideas.

To view the image, double click on it. Find the plans: encatc-wgprogramme2009.pdf and the plan for the Community Art Lab: community-art-laboratory.pdf.