Archive för Kulturverkstan

For the last couple of months the Kulturverkstan students have been working with projects in the city of Göteborg. The themes for these projects have been culture, city development, participation and democracy. Our students have been working with external partners. These partners have presented real live cases and ideas for project development to the students. In a common dialogue they have together developed these projects.  As in all projects it has been an act of balance between the needs of the partners, the creativity of our students and the citizens of Gothenburg. Here follows a short summary for our English-speaking partners.

Eriksbo Fritidspark

Eriksbo Fritidspark is an activity centre run by the community’s recreation organisation by day and in the evenings the different activities are the responsibility of the volunteer driven Eriksbo Parkförening. Available to the public are activities such as help with homework, a pottery class and yoga. One can also find a petting zoo with bunnies, goats and chickens as well as a much-visited green nature area. The board however wants to do more. They want Parken to become the official meeting place of the multicultural, beautiful community that is Eriksbo. Over the years new inhabitants have moved in and a worrying lack of local participation has grown. In order to assist the board in their development process a project group from Kulturverkstan was tasked with acquiring a ”vision document”. What kind of activities do the citizens of Eriksbo want to have at Parken?

Through interviews, public meetings, workshops and surveys we have collected thoughts and opinions about which needs exist in the community and what people wish of their spare time in Eriksbo.

In conclusion, we have been in contact with over 100 citizens of Eriksbo. In addition to solid suggestions there has been talk of the needs in different areas and potential improvements. During our inquiry we have learned that the work being done already at Parken is much appreciated, and with more resources the Parken can be even better.

Group members: Josefina Samuelsson, Anna Sandin, Hanna Jansson, Caroline Andersson, Fillip Williams

External partner: Parkföreningen Eriksbo och Hyresgästföreningen

Pleasure Parking – An innovative step towards the car parks of the future

A project assignment conducted by the project group Pleasure Parking at Kulturverkstan’s International Cultural Management Programme

During the autumn of 2011 we, the members of the project group Pleasure Parking, have conducted an assignment at the request of Göteborgs Stads Parkerings AB (the municipal parking company) and Kulturverkstan. Our main goal within the assignment was to deliver a raw material of opinions of the general public, concerning the company’s indoor car parks and its atmospheres. What does it take to improve one’s feeling of well-being and ease in these car parks?

We chose to arrange a public event in one of the company’s indoor car parks, with the aim to there and then collect the participants opinions through an inquiry and a ”wall of opinions”. We also placed a number of minor inquiries in three of the company’s central car parks, and we created a web site in connection to the parking company’s homepage along with an e-mail address to which opinions could be sent. Some other internal goals of Pleasure Parking was to create a forum for discussions on car parks as a part of the public space and its connection to environmental-related issues, and also to make sure that the dialogue and cooperation of the parking company with the general public, would continue after the completion of our assignment.

When we delivered the result of the inquiries to the parking company, the gathering of data was however not completely finished. The reason is that the minor inquiries in the car parks will continue and that the web page and the possibility to e-mail, will remain open to the public. We managed to evoke a forum for discussions and debates during the public event on issues of democracy and the environment, and we hope that these topics were also discussed among the public who took part of the media reports of the project.

One of the conclusions that we can make is that indoor car parks can be used for more purposes than that of parking only, for example art exhibitions and music performances. We succeeded in creating an attractive event with a high rate of participants, and a democratic forum in which the opinions of the public was gathered. We did find a gap between the number of participants and the number of delivered inquiries, and we made the conclusion that we, in Pleasure Parking, could have been more active towards the participants in order to encourage them to make their voices heard.

A bonus result was however that at least one of the decorations which we placed in the car park for the event will be made permanent, and that connections have been made between different cultural workers and the parking company for further cooperation in the future.

Group members: Johanna Franck, Caroline Pehrson, Martin Reinikainen , Anna Svensson, Tobias Westerberg

External partner: Göteborgs Stads Parkeringsbolag.

Space for young culture

A community centre for young people is planned to open in the centre of Gothenburg. The public administration for culture claimed in a document at the 31st January 20111 that a dialogue process would be an appropriate way to form the content of this centre. This initial process was to be called Space for young culture. Six students at Kulturverkstan was called in to the project in September to ensure a dialogue process of high quality standard. By a critical scrutinizing analysis of collected information and by identifying strengths and flaws, they were to offer improvements and solutions to improve the process.

Group members: Johanna Byström, Johan Lind, Lisa Säthil, Tobias Brandin, Elin Tollbom, Julia Adielsson

External partner: Kulturförvaltningen Göteborg, Rum för ung kultur

Project Vega

Project Vega has aimed to variegate and strengthen the voice of the elderly in the public debate, in a positive and artistic way see them as unique personalities and satisfy a need of being able to be a part of the cultural life in the city. The project created conditions for interactions between local artists and residents at the nursing home Vegahusen, one of Tre Stiftelser’s three nursinghomes in Gothenburg. In the creative process of the artworks, ten elderlys experiences and thoughts has been taken care of and shaped by ten artists with different forms of expressions. The project resulted in two exhibitions named ”A priest, a Dane and a ballerina” and a catalogue including information about the participators and the process of the artworks.

Group members: Erika Alsén, Anne-Li And, Lars Dyrendom, Klara Fulgentiusson Ejeby, Anna Hansen, Robin Palmqvist

External partner: Tre stiftelser Äldreboende

Avtryck

Being the main host of Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Röda Sten Art Centre asked us to arrange a one day activity within the Biennial. We all found the theme Pandemonium – Art in a time of creativity fever, to be highly interesting. The Biennial statement expresses a wish to be a “launch pad for new ideas and new world orders”. Sadly, we couldn’t find any means to harvest these thoughts, nor did we find any other points of interaction with the visitors. In this we found the aim for our project.

Our objectives were to catalyze the visitor’s reflection and enhance their participation, to enable simple ways for leaving a print and a forum for discussion in conjunction with visiting the Biennial.

Framtidslabb, Swedish for Future Laboratory, housed four stations ranging from our abstract Reflektorium to the more hands-on Tomorrow’s Headlines workshop.

From surveys and our conversations with participants we found that our goal was met. Our conclusion is that this sort of pedagogical activity offers the Biennial visitor a more enriching experience.

Group members: Göran Dahlström, Bella Ghajavand, Héctor García Jorquera, Jenny Haraldsson

External partner: Konsthallen Röda sten, Göteborg International Biennal for contemporary art.

Accomodation of Blattsploitation

The project’s primary aim has been to create conditions for a sustainable non-profit business that can accommodate the association ”Alla har en Historia att Berätta”, its ideas and visions. We have chosen to do this through a pilot study. In the beginning part of the pilot study we tried to gather and create a consensus on the ideas, the knowledge and experience within the association. We have also added ideas and suggestions that we believe favours the association’s sustainability and long-term work ahead. This was done in close collaboration with the association. One of these proposals, to develop the association’s website, came up early in the process. There was a lot of interest in this proposal from the members of the association and therefore we decided to begin this work in parallel with the work on the pilot study.

The issues that have been a leader for us in the pilot study concerning the association’s structure and development was:

• What does the association’s form, content, skills and resources look like?
• How would they go ahead? What opportunities and conditions are available for these ideas?
• What can be our contribution to the association to increase the possibility of a
• sustainable structure?

The association’s purpose is to highlight the suburbs of Gothenburg and those who live there, to allow people to visualize themselves on their own terms. They want a larger amount of voices to be heard and more perspectives to be made visible through the stories in the media form of Digital Storytelling (DST). The association’s focus is twofold. DST will be the association’s core activity. DST is a short film, usually 5-15 minutes with a voice and images combined with music or other sounds that create a story. They also have a vision about the association being a knowledge centre for DST. The second part of the association is to serve as a platform for other thoughts and ideas that fit within the framework of its statutes. Here they have thoughts about casting companies, films, TV-Shows about food from mixed cultures and so on.

Group members: Annika Jonsson, Johan Elldér, Martina Jeansson, Olle Andersson, Pia Engman

External partner: Föreningen Alla har en Historia att Berätta

Photos from the project Pleasure Parking.

Trans Europe Halles – meetings that matters

During four days, 27 – 30th October, around 100 people from different Independent Cultural Centres throughout Europe have met in Bordeaux for the 72nd Trans Europe Halles meeting. This network (founded in 1983) gather more than fifty multidisciplinary and socially engaged member centres. Most centres are located in buildings from industrial heritage and have taken important action in challenging the established cultural policy.

This meeting was held at TNT – Manufacture de Chaussures in Bordeaux, France. The theme of the meeting was Neighbourhood / Voisinage. The meeting was organised together with TEH Friend organisation ARTfactories/Autre(s) pARTs and supported by TEH:s three-year network project Engine Room Europe.

About TNT

TNT opened in 1997 in a former shoe factory, and supports artistic research in the performing arts. Originally devoted to the theatre, it opened to other disciplines such as dance, music, visual arts, poetry, etc. These relations can last from a month to two years, through residencies or long-term projects. TNT tries to develop new ways of working, in its programming as in its functioning, in the choice of the artists, as in the working modalities, in the relations with the public as in the economy of the projects.

About ARTfactories/Autre(s)pARTs

The organisation ARTfactories/Autre(s)pARTs is a common platform for reflection, research and action, transmission and solidarity for the development of art centres that organise their practices and experiments around the relationship between arts, territories and populations. ARTfactories/Autre(s)pARTs is based in Toulouse, France.

Kulturverkstan is not a member of TEH but took part of the meeting as a guest. Networking is always a good way to reflect upon what’s possible, get inspired, review your own work and talk with people with common interests. This network is also interesting to us as we always look for interesting internships for our students.

Some snapshots

The meeting was a mix of formal and informal meetings, information and interaction, meeting with artist, brain-gym and artistic work. Among other things we took part in two different workshops:

The workshop ”Cross-Boarder Exchange” set out to explore the relationship between people with common ideas, but different national contexts. In this workshop we discuss challenges and possibilities of these exchanges, starting with two examples from Kulturfabrik in Luxembourg and La Grainerie in Toulouse, France. They both shared their experiences from recent cross-boarder projects and the discussion that followed centred around issues such as regional identity, European funding and the benefits of proper evaluations. The over all outcome was the positive encouragement from the participants with experience in cross-boarder exchange. That even though communication can prove to be very challenging and a lot of the budget needs to be spent on travelling it is still a very rewarding experience that your organisation will benefit from in a number of ways. The workshop leader was Dušica Parezanović from the centre REX, in Belgrade,Serbia.

Another workshop introduced ”Holacracy, a new way of Governance”. The term ”Holacracy” refers to a practice of structuring, governing and running an organisation. One of the interesting aspects of this model was the concept of doing what’s ”workable”. To not spend to much time on finding what’s perfect before you try it out. Inspiration comes from software development and open source where you launch a Beta-version and get immediate feedback to make it better.

Travelling to a European meeting often give you the opportunity to also meet colleagues from your own country. We spent some time with the Swedish members Röda sten, Konstepidemin, Kulturmejeriet, Subtopia, Culturen and Not Quite. Carl-Oscar Sjögren, artistic director for the performing arts company Drift, took part of the TEH meeting to launch, and gain inspiration on, his new project; to open an international art centre in an old abandoned mine. The mine is called Ställberg and is situated in the Swedish forests of Västmanland in a mine district that was closed down some 30 years ago. Since the TEH network constitutes mainly of cultural centres in buildings that was once used for industrial purposes, Carl-Oscar had the chance to meet with a lot of people that had pioneered the same roads he is now about to discover.

In Autumn 2012 the TEH meeting will be held in Gothenburg, hosted by Röda sten and Konstepidemin. Nätverkstan/Kulturverkstan will most certainly take part in some way!

EVENTO2011

Parallel to the TEH meeting  the second edition of EVENTO in Bordeaux offered a series of interesting exhibitions and art projects. EVENTO2011 has invited Michelangelo Pistoletto and his foundation Cittadellarte as artistic director and brings many local and international artists together under the theme ”Art for an Urban Re-Evolution”. The aim is to encourage us to reinvent the city and how we live together.

We visited some of the interesting spots:

ONCE UPON A FUTURE (STEALTH.unlimited + arc en rêve centre d’architecture Bordeaux) is a fictional account of a possible utopia for Bordeaux in 2030, inspired by citizen’s initiatives. This fictional narrative takes the form of a large mural created by a number of graphic designers and graphic novel artists. We have learnt from history different consequences of imposed utopias, in this work the artist are trying to use the concept of utopia in a ”more pragmatic and less theoretical, more immanent and less transcendent: a hybrid of utopia, somewhere between desire and reality”. Walking along the mural, taking part of all these different ideas and desires my reflection is that the notion of utopia or future at least tells us a lot about the present.

”This is how we came to eat sugar”

Musée d’Aquitaine (Aquitaine is the south-western region of France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain)

This museum with it contents Pistoletto uses as a portrait of the past that help us to prefigure the future: Slavery, immigration and other things that we have built our societies and economical growth upon. Six international artists – William Kentridge, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Marzia Migliora, Michael Blum, Shilpa Gupta and Wael Shawky – create a link between the museum collections and elements of refexion on contemporary society.

Our last stop was at a space-specific art project where an artist has worked together with people living there creating a garden, a stage and a café. Everyone in the neighbourhood has been invited to use it for their ideas.

By: Karin Dalborg & Malin Schiller, Kulturverkstan

Below:

1. TNT, and 2-3. Once upon a future

The educational board of Kulturverkstan has spent a couple of days in Istanbul, visiting organisations, students on internships, and taking part of  the vibrant cultural life of the metropolis. We have visited and discussed the possibility of future cooperations with, among others, the following: Garasjistanbul, Istanbul´s major scene for experimental dance and theatre, with a huge international network; Filmmor,  a feminist film festival that gains a rapidly growing domestic as well as international attention for its creative work for gender equality; Kalem, a literary agency as well as festival, that focuses on bringing world literature to Turkey, and Turkish literature to the rest of the world; Pozitif, one of the major labels of the Turkish music industry, as well as a leading concert and festival producer.

The impression of cultural diversity and expressive power is indeed overwhelming. Some features seem to be common to the initiatives we have visited. One is a sense of curiousity for the surrounding world, whether it is Western Europe, Japan, Brazil, or the Middle East. This openness is usually explained by the fact that Turkish cultural life for decades suffered from isolation when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship. A crucial year in this respect seems to be 2005, when several initiatives suddenly came in to action.

Everything is not at its best. As Mustafa Avkuran, director of Garasjistanbul, points out, there are many limits to the freedom of expression, both artistically and journalistically, both formal and informal. According to recent reports, no country in the world has so many journalists in jail as Turkey. And Tugce Canbolat, at Filmmor, told us that domestic violence has increased during recent years, partly as a tragic consequence of women´s stronger demands for equal rights. This does not in any way prevent Filmmor for carry on their work, on the contrary. The cooperative has two main objectives: to increase involvement of women in cinema and in the media, and to disseminate non-sexist representation and experiences of women. To this end they not only organise festivals, but also workshops on how to write, produce and make films. Right now they are engaged in a documentary project that highlights the situation for women in Turkey and Sweden.

Nermin Mollaglu and Mehmet Dermitas at Kalem Agency work for the exchange  between literatures in many ways. They are literary agents, but they also organise book festivals, and have taken an ambitious initiative to promote translations (and translators). One of Kulturverkstans students, Silke Spangler, is doing her intership this spring at Kalem.

Another one of our students, Ricardo Samaniego, is doing his internship at Pozitif, one of the most influential networks in Turkish music industry. It contains of many things, as Okan Aydin told us when we visited his office in central Istanbul: festival organiser, record label, radio station, and – not the least – one of the hottest scenes in Istanbul´s boiling club life: Babylon.

There is of course many paradoxes in the Turkish cultural life: the state support for the arts is limited, which forces all organisations to search for sponsors, a both tiresome and time demanding work. The ruling AKP party (no one expects it to lose the upcoming elections in June) is on the one hand strictly conservative on moral issues, but is one the other hand liberal in economics and strongly in favour of closer relations to the European Union. The atmosphere that the visitor meets in Istanbul is one of a self confident and proud nation and culture, situated as it is between the historic Orient and Occident, determined to play a role that suits it size and traditions, both in the region and on the world scene as a whole.

Text: Mikael Löfgren, acting Manager at Kulturverkstan

Photo: Malin Schiller, Coordinator at Kulturverkstan, & Karin Dalborg, Manager at Kulturverkstan

At Kulturverkstan, our two-year training programme International Project Management within Culture, the students get a flying start.

As soon as the introduction is done, schedules distributed and the first getting-to-know-each-other-exercises performed, they are put into groups that during the semester work on a project together. The result is presented in public at the end of the semester.

The projects are real life assignments from cultural and civil-society organizations, institutions or university in the city of Göteborg. All courses during the semester on culture and the local city, project management, democracy, communication (written and oral), team building, and so forth are integrated during the semester, including contact and communication with the constituent.

Thursday, January 13, the seven groups presented the impressive results of their projects relating to the Glocal (global and local) city of Göteborg. Each project had in dialogue with the project owner, and as part of their education, worked out seven very relevant and important projects where culture and society meet in the very real sense.

In the project Lost in Migration they wanted to put focus on authors in exile and are producing a booklet with short stories from exile writers in the region; in Röstverket the group held a workshop in the Art Exhibition Hall Röda Sten combining knitting as telling stories; Gothenburg Shout had the aim of creating meeting spaces through digital storytelling as a way of putting personal stories in a public room and has showed the short films at various places around the city; Nya Grannar (New Neighbours) a project working with the new Mosque in Göteborg creating dialogue with university-students studying to become teachers and the Mosque to mitigate the religious gaps and increase knowledge of Islam; Att förtöja en stad (To moor a city) is an artistic research project where they aim to understand the city from the grassroot level, which goes directly into the debate on city development; and the project En drake i Göteborg (A dragon in Göteborg), an assignment where the Göteborg International Film Festival asked for a small study of the role of the festival in a growing city; and one project as a sort of reaction of the ”projectification” in society and the need for something else than effectiveness, goals, and instrumentalization.

Several of the projects have gotten attention in the city outside of the education and have had public events and shows.

To work with real projects in education is a challenge and a necessity in training as Project Managers in Culture. To be able to handle the unexpected, teamwork, flexibility, conflict management, and communication are a few of the important competencies for managers in this field.

Expectations were high when we started the workshop on ”The Art of living on Art” with visual artists, theatre people, a writer and dancers and choreographers in Nairobi, Kenya. How do I do to be able to do what I like most? How do you as an Artist to balance the business and the artistic side? How do you find ways to sustain your artistic work? How can you find the missing link between production and the market? Open a window to see new things?

We start quite frankly. We don’t have any answers. There are not any quick fixes you can follow that will solve all the obstacles or solve how to live on Art. You have the answers yourself. What we do is putting up the room for reflection and a structured way to reflect and think of where you are, your obstacles, how to get past these, your future ideas, how to deal with changes.

Eleven professionals within the Artistic field gathered to go through this process for two intense days. It’s interesting to see that Artist from different contexts as Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, India and Kenya have so much in common. The obstacles, difficulties and challenges put forward are very much the same, although the contexts are so different.

The workshop in Nairobi was organized by GoDown Art Center in cooperation with Nätverkstan. Read more about ”The Art of living on Art” under the catogeory with the same name.

In 1999 Kulturverkstan, the two year Project Management Training Programme within culture started. The idea was to combine theoretical analysis with practical action plans, academic level with practice in the ”real world”, studies at Lagerhuset together with internships on organizations in cultural – or other – fields in Sweden or elsewhere. Lecturers from academia combined with festival managers, writers, philosophers, project managers, theatre directors, actors, film makers. And to work with students with all artistic expressions, to be cross-cultural. Thirty-five students each year have been accepted to Kulturverkstan after an extensive application process. Around three hundred students have examined and 85% have gotten jobs or started their own business after education. A number we are proud of.

On Saturday we celebrated Kulturverkstan 10 years with a big party and event at Röda Sten, a cultural house and exhibition hall by the channel in Göteborg. The Artist Lisa Nordström started the evening with her piece 7 States of Passion followed by Islandic writer and poet Andri Snær Magnason who talked about is award winning book ”Dreamland – a Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation” (2006) and the situation in Island after the financial crisis. Old students showed what they are working with, speeches, food and lots of dancing to the DJ:s captivating music the whole night long. The new cultural price in Göteborg, in memory of our late colleague Lars Lövheim was inaugurated.

A book on Kulturverkstan 10 years will be available soon (in Swedish)!

The summer academy ”The Art of living in Art” has come to an end after three intense workshop days at Stenebyskolan (School of Steneby) in Dalsland. Guest lecturer and workshop facilitator was Sian Prime, among many things MA at Goldsmiths University in UK.

The Artists taking part in the academy have been musicians, composers, visual artist, actresses, who have worked all summer on their action plans. They have in workshops in the beginning of summer visualized their future, looked at their skills, hinders and possibilities, money and meaning, what they put their time on, how to plan your actions differently to achieve what you want and so forth. They have had group meetings with a facilitator during summer, together with individual coaching sessions. And now, in Steneby, the final days of building relations in relationship modelling, working on their offer, discussing the literature they have read, drawing some conclusions. Everything in workshops, open discussions, talks two and two, and individual thinking and writing.

”Don’t stop look around you. Don’t stop caring. Don’t stop listening” is one of Sian Prime’s many interesting thoughts. There are three questions to keep constantly with you when thinking of what you offer as an artist and how this could interest others:

1) Why should I care?

2) Why should I trust you?

3) Why should I believe you?

You need to have your heart (1), guts (2), and head (3) with you when engaging with other professionals. Another thing is not to let money hinder you. You are not the only one not driven by money, Sian Prime explains, so are many others. ”Money is rarely the driver”, she says, you have to find out what drives those you want to work with and engage in building professional relationships. In the long run, this can build new ideas that you can live on, but you have to get started.

”Treat no as a question”, is another point. Always ask what the ”no” means. What does it stand for?

Nätverkstan runs the summer academy in cooperation with Göteborg University, Sian Prime, and the Västra Götaland. The Academy was the first of three summer academies. The experiences will also be put into the new Masters Programme at the University on Art and entrepreneurship that will be developed this year. Read this post on the start of the course.

The summer academy ”The Art of living on Art” started this week and we just got back from three interesting days of work in Steneby, Dalsland. The academy is started by Göteborg University, Academy of Music and Drama, in cooperation with Nätverkstan, and turns to those who are, or aim to be, professional Artists. It’s about Art and entrepreneurship with a bearing thought that Artists know more about entrepreneurship than they (and others) believe they do. One of the aims is to make Artists aware of the competences and resources they have and catalyze these by reflection, discussions, good examples and guidance. It’s about taking power of your own lives. If you want to make a living on your Art – what do you need to do? What actions do you have to take? What hinders are there on the way?

There are no easy solutions or quick ways. On one hand report after report show that creative industries are a growing field, this is where you will find future jobs and new entrepreneurial ideas. At the same time other studies show that the income level among Artists is very low. So how do you do if you want to live of the income from your Art? The idea of the summer academy is to create a room for reflection and to start look at the resources you have; ideas, competences, skills; and to look at your network and relations. And ask yourself ”What do I lack or what is stopping me from doing what I want to do?”

The models used are workshops for self-reflection. The Artists have the competence; the teachers are  putting up the framework and leading the process of reflection. Many of the workshop-themes and models have been done in cooperation with Sian Prime, who was one of those running the incubator Creative Pioneer Programme at Nesta in London a few years ago, an incubator specifically within the Artistic field.

Three intense, hard working and fun days. Now the course continues with group and individual coaching. Next gathering with the whole class is July 10.

The Summeracademy is running over the summer and in August each student will have a three-year action plan on how to live on their Art. Read the Swedish website Att leva på sin konst (The Art of living on Art). On this website you can find many reports of creative industries and the incomelevel of Artists, look under the category ”Reports, articles and books”.

”Running cultural institutions and cultural projects of tomorrow into the 21st century will put new demands on leaders. Competencies as flexibility, risk taking, courage, intercultural awareness and international outlook are increasing in importance for leaders in organisations.”

Eight leaders of important cultural organisations and institutions in Sweden gathered in a think tank last November to discuss leadership within Art and culture and the idea of a Cultural Leadership Award in Sweden. The results are put forward by Nätverkstan in the newly published report on cultural leadership: ”To lead Art into the Future. An idea to develop leadership within culture” (in Swedish ”Att leda konsten in i framtiden. Om en idé för utveckling av ledarskap i kulturlivet.”).

Leadership within the field of Art and culture is an ignored area, and possibilities are few for development. Management-courses are many, as well as courses in laws and regulations, staff management, economy and likewise. But how do you develop the leadership role? This has to do with personal skills as well as a continuous interest in reflecting on experiences. The model for the idea put forward in the report is from UK; the successful ”Cultural Leadership Awards” run by Venu Dhupa, which at the time was put up by Nesta. The award was dedicated to exceptional leaders within Art, technology and science and showed to be an innovative way of developing leadership. As Venu Dhupa says ”an investment in leadership is necessary for the future of cultural life”.

Leading Art and cultural institutions and projects is difficult and put specific demands on leadership. Again you are expected to be an all-area-Artist. And there are, argued by people in the field and Art Management researchers, specific conditions in the cultural field you have to handle. The main goal is rarely profitability, but rather human, Artistic, social or aesthetic goals. It is therefore more difficult to show when goals are achieved. It’s easy to put economic figures on paper, but how do you measure social or aesthetic goals? For many working in the field, money is not the main goal. This means motivation, drive and belief in higher values are important factors for anyone working in the field and a factor when motivating staff. It is a production-driven field, research shows, and not consumer-driven as in so many other areas. Another factor is that Art production doesn’t follow the logic of competition and is often unprofitable. All these factors put demands on the leader, who also has to adjust to a changing society where flexibility, risk taking, resilience and resourcefulness are necessary personal skills. Interestingly the same skills were put forward in an article in the Hindu, in October last year, when discussing necessary skills when working in the Indian context. Read a short version here.

The report was written by Karin Dalborg, Manager of Nätverkstan’s training programme Kulturverkstan, and Lotta Lekvall, Director at Nätverkstan. Download the report (in Swedish, a translation is hopefully published soon)  kulturledarskap2009. You can have a look at the model for the Swedish Cultural Leadership Awards on the attached images, just double-click to make them larger.

”Will all of us working in the cultural field adapt to new tendencies in society or will we create alternative views and solutions?” The question is put by Lena Stenmar, Coordinator at Kulturverkstan, and who just published the report on development tendencies and educational needs within culture in the 2010 era. The study is based on interviews and seminars with people within the cultural field in Sweden.

Several of the interviewed stress that society is becoming more and more instrumental, culture and Art are expected to solve other problems in society and the boarders of commercial and non-commercial is changing. Full time jobs at an institution are declining, the employments will be project based and on free lance basis. Cultural practitioners and Artists will be forced to find other sources of funding than, in the Swedish context, traditional public funding. Skills and knowledge expected of people within Art and culture are within a wide range; you are supposed to be flexible and a sort of all-area-artist, doing everything. Skills expected are communication skills, writing skills, social competence, leadership, economy and law, organisational and administrative, understanding of Artistic processes, political science and a professional way of working. This combined withthe necessity within Art: a high quality level of Artistic work.

Some overall tendencies are found, that will affect cultural practitioners and Artists, and educators. There will be more expectations of working across traditional boarders; internationalisation, regionalisation, globalization is becoming more important, you are expected to work on international basis; more work on every level in society will be project based; professionaliing the sector is expected, which puts more demand for continuous education and training possibilities; funding from many different sources; entrepreneurship; and, finally, leadership development.

The report is written by Lena Stenmar, Coordinator at Kulturverkstan, and can be downloaded (only in Swedish): kulturutbildning10-talet.

”Entrepreneurship is to find out what you would like to do and then how you are going to realize it”, says Professor Dr. Hermann Voesgen at Fachhochschule in Potsdam. He is Head of the Course ”Culture and Project Work” and Kulturverkstan visited him to discuss culture work, culture policy and the culture sector in Germany.

Mr Voesgen has worked among other things in many cultural projects for the development of rural regions and as cultural advisor. He showed us an area in Potsdam newly developed to host both Cultural institutions of the City and Creative Industries. Old industrial and military buildings are rebuilt. Further development is needed though to make the area more vibrant and alive.

Written by Karin Dalborg, Manager of Nätverkstan’s education Kulturverkstan. The visit was part of a study visit to meet representatives from different organisations and education in cultural life, together with the cultural scene, in Berlin and Potsdam on 19 – 22 of March.

On March 20-21, a seminar on creative industries will take place in Jonsered, close to Göteborg. The seminar is arranged by the Foundation for the Culture of the Future (Stiftelsen framtidens kultur) and will discuss culture economy, the every day life of cultural work and the economical aspects, experienced based knowledge of cultural actors and more. The seminar is based on a study produced by Nätverkstan in 2002 called ”Den ofrivillige företagaren” (”The involuntary entrepreneur”). Many things have of course happened since it was written and a new edition will be released soon.

The concept of Creative Industries is fairly new in Sweden and it could be a good idea to look deeper into experiences from other countries. Nätverkstan has followed the development in Great Britain since 1999 where it definitely has been a bigger subject. In 1998, the recently created UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport placed the newly named ”Creative Industries” – media, design and arts based enterprises – at the heart of the nations economic future. The antecedents of the creative industries, the so-called ”Cultural Industries” of the 1970s and 80s were carefully steered from view, as the use of the term creative industries signalled a desire to harness cultural production to the new economic agenda.

In February last year Nätverkstan attended a seminar at the Open University in Milton Keynes called: The Creative Industries: Ten years after. The organisers, Mark Banks, Department of Sociology/CRESC, The Open University, and Justin O’Connor, Cultural and Media Industries Research Centre, University of Leeds asked themselves:  What has happened in the decade since 1998?

In the invitation Mark Banks reflects:

”On the one hand the creative industries can be seen to have gone from strength to strength. The UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport has re-launched its creative industry strategy with renewed vigour. The creative Economy Programme sets out an ambitious strategy, which once again places the creative industries at the heart of the UK’s economic future. The UK model has then been internationally exported, across Europe, and into territories as diverse as Australia, China and South Korea, shaping and being shaped by pre-existing policy frameworks, contributing to the rapid globalization of creative industry debate. Yet there are some hard questions to be asked and key issues to be addressed – this symposium attempts to address these issues and in doing so take forward an agenda for critical debate on the creative industries.”

Many interesting key speakers were invited: Justin O’Connor, David Hesmondhalgh, Andy Pratt, Kate Oakley, Chris Bilton, Mark Banks and Jason Toynbee. They addressed themes such as: The historical formation and context of creative industries; Creative industry policy and the legacy of New labour; Creative industries and local and regional development; Creative industries in comparative international contexts; The changing politics of creativity and creative industry work; And The future policy agenda for creative industries.

Several of the perspectives highlighted were indeed more critical and interesting than many of other seminars we have attended. Mark Banks talked about the shift from cultural to creative industries policy represents a de-politicization of cultural work in so far as ”cultural” concerns (i.e. those regarding meaning of work or its artistic, social or political value) have been sequestered in favour of approaches that focus on enhancing only ”creative” commodity production and economic value. Kate Oakley talked, among many other things, about an over focus on novelty as the primary determinant of cultural worth. Andy Pratt described how the cultural industries have been ”made up”. In particular – in the UK context – he examine the pre-mapping document (1998) period; the mapping document; and the ”framework” phase. He set out to show that categories are embedded in concepts, therefore the taxonomies that are used to measure the cultural industries, constitute them.

There is a web cast replay of the Creative Industries Symposium here. The programme of the event is found here. The programme (in Swedish) of the event in Jonsered on March 20–21: program-jonsered.pdf. The report ”Den ofrivillige företagaren” (in Swedish): ofrivilligforetagare.pdf.

Written by Karin Dalborg, Manager of Kulturverkstan, a Project Managament Training Programme within Culture, run by Nätverkstan.

One of the more interesting suggestions in the new report on Swedish Cultural Policy put forward by the Committee of Inquiry on Cultural Policy is what is called cultural policy as aspect policy. With this it’s stated that cultural policy should interact with societal issues like education, business, regional development, health and environment.

”We understand cultural policy as an aspect of all policy areas”. The intention is that ”perspective, creative talent, knowledge and insights that the authorities, institutions and practitioners within the cultural field hold can be important for societal development”. Quite rightly, it’s pointed out that this is not new, but the Committee believes that the development needs to ”accelerate and accentuate”.

To the extent it has been noticed, the suggestion has been met with positive response. Hopes have been put forward that the issues within the cultural field will be treated as issues within the environmental field. Today all public activities and all political decisions should be saturated with environmental awareness.

It sounds fantastic, but is it realistic? From what position does culture invite for interaction? And what sort of societal development is addressed?

A better comparison is perhaps done with the aid policy? It’s an area of policy that has been equally questioned and debated as cultural policy. It’s an area as exposed to cyclical changes and ideologies.

In 2003 the Parliament adopted Sweden’s new Policy for Global Development (PGU). The new development policy should include ”both an effective aid of high quality and coherence that includes all policy areas”. Hopes were high. But what happened? During the governance of the Allians parties, the results have had a reverse PGU, where all other policy areas impoverish aid and its budget: Refugee camps, dept depreciation, depreciation of costs for Swedish embassies.

1998, the same year as the Region Västra Götaland was formed; Göteborg formulated its Strategy for Cultural Policy, the so-called version 1.0. One of the main tracks was that culture should ”permeate all policy areas”. Now, around eleven years later we can ask: Is this what happened? Or did culture become an aid-assistant for health, regional development, and integration?

There are many good reasons for the aspect policy that the Committee is looking at. Culture can and should contribute to societal development. But if small policy areas like culture will be able to play such a central role, its integrity as to be ensured. Then you have to make sure that cultural policy is neither invaded, nor dissolved in other policy areas.

Written by Karin Dalborg, Manager of Kulturverkstan, Education in Project Management within culture, run by Nätverkstan. The article was published at the Internet Journal Alba on March 9, 2009. For the Swedish original, have a look at here.

”We are living in a more globalized world, whether we like it or not”. With those words introduced Professor Jan Aart Scholte a seminar on Building Global Democracy. He continued:  “The world also tends to be governed more global. Global problems need global response. But how?” As one of a group of academics, practitioners and policy makers, he has created a network  called the Building Global Democracy Programme (BGD). Their aim is to give a clearer picture of the concept of Global Democracy, put it on the agenda, raise the consciousness about it, give publicity to different initiatives and hopefully formulate some proposals of what to do to create a more democratic world.

It is not an easy task. Finding new solutions to old problems. Even this small seminar demonstrates the difficulties. We are around 30 people in the room. The facilitator asks us to put questions to the panel as an input to the discussion? We are also asked to present ourselves by name and nationality, as if each and every one of us could represent her or his country. This is only one example of how old structures and perceptions are being reproduced.

However, the initiative is very interesting and worth looking into: www.buildingglobaldemocracy.org

Yesterday evening we witnessed a historic event in a huge exhibition hall in the outskirts of Belém. Tens of thousands of enthusiastic delegates to the World Social Forum greeted Brazilian president Lula as he entered the stage together with four presidential colleagues from the South American Continent, among them Venezuela´s controversial leader, Hugo Chávez. The meeting can be interpreted as one of the outcomes of the Forum process: civil society in Latin America has managed to get their candidates elected president.
Written by Karin Dalborg, Manager of Kulturverkstan, the Project Management Training Programme at Nätverkstan.

Welcome citizens of the world!
Coming from Nätverkstan, Gothenburg Sweden, I’m one of 100 000 people from all over the world attending the 9th World Social Forum. This time it is held in Belém, Amazonia Brazil. Opposed to the World Economic Forum in Davos this is a meeting place for Civil Society Organisations, activists, scholars, networks and other people interested in making “another world possible”. The Forum aims to be a space for alliances and platforms for action, discussion and new perspectives.

The official opening took place on January 27th with a march through the city. During six days some 2000 self-managed activities (seminars, workshops, cultural activities) are taking place. The topics span from democracy, Human Rights, climate changes, our natural resources…

This year the WSF enlarges its territory. Local social forum events express their participation in Mexico, Kongo, Pakistan, Sweden (Malmö), Palestine, France, Sudan, to mention some of them. This Belém expanded has been prepared through the social networking website of the WSF.

Nätverkstan has been following this process since 2003, participating in both the global and the regional (European Social Forum) forums. It’s difficult to grasp but it’s definitely one of the most interesting events in the 21st century. A grassroots initiative that indicates a global civil society. What will come out of it? I think it’s too early to evaluate.

Written by Karin Dalborg, Manager of Kulturverkstan, the Project Management Training Programme at Nätverkstan.

A constant question for most organisations, no matter size, years in business or field of work, is how you keep an organisation vivid and with high ambitions still after years in business? How do you keep it creative and challenging? It’s a true question also for a creative organisation. How do you stimulate creativity? How do you keep challenging yourself? And how do you combine careful planning and longterm strategies with flexibility and shortterm projects? A difficulty that is true for most cultural organisations.

At Nätverkstan these questions are constantly discussed and reflected, and will be also this year as we start after summer vacation.

Read more about Nätverkstan in natverkstan.pdf.

Kulturverkstan KV 06 has finally graduated. We have been very inspired by their cleaver minds, creative ideas and turbulent behaviour. They have done their Learning at Work on very different places like Världskulturmuseet, Brewhouse, Street (Stockholm), Riksteatern,
Raisinen Creative (NY), Tempo Dokumentärfestival (Stockholm), Kultur Ungdom, Kulturlabbet, Marks Kommun, The American-Scandinavian Foundation (NY), Pustervik, Faktum, VGR Kultur, Kulturdepartementet, Konsthallen, UKM and many more.

We in the Course management would like to congratulate you!

/Karin, Lena & Olav

In the European net magazine Eurozine you can read a very interesting article by the sociologist and freelance writer Klaus Ronneberger:

“Interns, temporary agency workers, people on job creation schemes, and pseudo-freelances make up the vast reserve army of workers in precarious employment. For the majority, standards such as productivity or flexibility have become second nature. In this respect, they are the avant-garde of post-Fordism, constantly opening up new avenues of self-exploitation.”

It was written a bout a year ago but when I read the last report from the Swedish Public Employment Service Cultural department it came back to me. We are closely approaching the end of an era. If you work in the cultural field you must be a freelancer or a self employed. Some statistics:

From Sweden:
In the cultural field the self-employed staff is increasing by 10-15 % every year (p 6-8). All of the growth within this sector is with and by self-employed and freelances.

From Germany (From Ronneberger):
In the 1980s over 80 per cent of musicians had permanent jobs, but within twenty years this proportion had dropped to 54 per cent. The number of actors with full-time jobs dropped from 76 per cent to 58 per cent during the same period.

The trend is clear. When I grew up I will be self-employed or a freelancer. Is that a problem? Well If you are a liberal and believe in choices this is a problem. If an entire sector is filled with projects run by self-employed each and every organisation will lose its memory. Further on will there be problems if the University and other educational institutions don’t provide the skills necessary for the workforce they educate. In this era new skills are needed:

•  Mobility
•  Networking
•  Competence for organising your own work processes
•  Strategic marketing of Yourself as a brand
•  Relational skills and social competence necessary for the “I- company” to stay on the market

We run an education, http://kulturverkstan.net/information_in_english, which is in the middle of this situation. We are small, quite new and unhierarchical. Do we like this situation? Well, it is much like the Greenhouseeffect. In some way it is contested, i.e. does it really exist? But if you have the feeling that the weather becomes worse and worse it might very well be so. The political changes the last 30 years has put us in this situation. The end of the Keynesian era, globalisation, the neoliberal revolution and the postpolitical dilemma are all true facts. It has changed the working market forever. Of course are there both pro’s and con’s. It has in some ways increased the possibilities for social mobility class wise. On the negative side: How are people supposed to pursue long-term goals if they constantly have to re-organise their lives and re-orient themselves?

Or to put it in an other way – We must learn to understand the dialectics of the postfordist society. We as an education must be in the forefront of this understanding. Otherwise will we loose both ourselves, but more importantly the future of our students.

The title of this text is an adaptation from the Swedish painter Peter Tillbergs ”Blir du lönsam, lille vän?”. This painting is in many ways the best description of the school politics of the fordist society. A remake of today would describe a single individual in the classroom. The face will surely look the same but today the collective is gone.

Further reading:
Klaus Ronnebergers text in Eurozine: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-26-ronneberger-en.html
The long-term report from the Swedish Public Employment Service Cultural department (in Swedish): http://www.arbetsformedlingen.se/go.aspx?c=220

Peter Tillbergs painting is available to buy as a poster from Moderna Museet in Stockholm:
http://www.modernamuseet.se/v4/templates/template3.asp?id=2533