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The last semester at Kulturverkstan, the two-year International Culture Project Management Programme, the students do an internship at an institution, organization or project which they have identified as interesting from a learning perspective.
During their internship, they also identify a question or focus area which they research. The topics range from the sustainable society, citizen dialogue, equality and gender in cultural life, the relation between an intense working situation and the every day life, work and motive, and much more.
Coming back to Kulturverkstan, they write a final report as well as have an open presentation to discuss their topics with invited guests and audience. The discussions are rich both in depth and learning aspects and it’s a time of the year that has become a must if you’re interested in keeping up-to-date in important discussions in the cultural scene.
Read more here and if you happen to be in Göteborg – slip into one of the seminars!
Categories: Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Education Entrepreneurship Kulturverkstan Seminar
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Project, Development, Employment, Entrepreneur, Social entrepreneur
21 maj, 2013
”Throw out the management books and read novels instead!”
Kerstin Brunnberg has a long list of references. She is now Chair of Swedish Art Council, and has a long career behind her as journalist and head of several of the large newspapers, as well as radio and TV.
She is invited to the education Kulturverkstan to talk about art, culture, the role of art in society, and leadership.
Being a leader of cultural institutions and organisations means to work with people, and the best place for learning of people is in novels. Read a lot, is a message.
Reading also helps writing. It’s necessary for any project manager to be able to describe its work in plans and project applications. Proposals written with passion, personal tone and genuin interest do have a larger chance to come through than buzzwords with no content. Might sound evident, but it’s easy to fall into the buzzword trap.
Flexibility, complexity, hard work, and to always stand up for the freedom of expression are leading words for this soft-strong lady.
For any project manager within art and culture, this should be on your bed-side to read: The law of freedom of the press.
Follow Nätverkstan at Vine, where you find a clip from the lecture.
Categories: Artistic practice Blogg Creative spaces Cultural Policy Democracy Education Kulturverkstan Leadership Seminar
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Policy, Democracy, Education
3 maj, 2013
The Cultural Journal Glänta is celebrating 20 years and do this with an App full of future words. Like Deppbägare, Dialogdemonstrant, Öntreprenera, and Öövermod (sorry, an English translation of these words doesn’t exist yet as hardly the words yet exist…).

A few years ago the journal invited over hundred artists, writers, researchers, philosophers, and journalists to add one piece each to the puzzle and the Future Encyclopedia was born. It started as a printed journal and has now become an App for Iphone and Ipad possible to download for free.
Nätverkstan has created the App as part of the effort of together with Cultural Journals find new, simple, and economic sound ways to publish text in print and digital format. Also download the App for the Journal Ord&Bild.
Categories: Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Cultural Journals Culture-led Development Digitization Distribution Entrepreneurship Nätverkstan
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Creativity, Cultural Journal, Cultural Project, Democracy, Development, Digitization, Distribution, Entrepreneur, Transformation
26 mars, 2013
Göteborg is the host city of one of the biggest book fairs in Northern Europe. The latest years, the need of finding another positioning has evolved and to meet this need Mediadagarna – The Media Days fires off for the second year in a row.
Nätverkstan and Kulturchock, who work vividly with different ideas and initiatives to meet up the needs of the cultural journals, see this platform as one way of putting the Swedish cultural journals on the map.
We are already convinced of the multi-dimensional spread in content as well as subjects presented in the printed cultural journals and their role in Swedish democracy. What we had not digged deeper into before was the sound of them. What would they sound like if it was sound? We decided to build a sound installation in order to make them ”speak” in a new way.
From an old portable typewriter you hear the sound of typings from laptops as well as manual key buttons in a mxi with lead pencils writing on paper. ”Typings” is a 7`48”tape recording played in a loop.
From the headphones attached to the installation play a variation of sound samples from cultural magazines that work with additional formats as sound. Some do radio, talking magazines or present sound art works along with their releases. For this special occasion we also did a special recording of a young girl reading poetry from the arty, literary, and philosophic edition of OEI.
Text and photo: Helena Persson
Categories: Art Artistic practice Creative spaces Cultural Journals Democracy Distribution Innovation Music
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Journal, Cultural Policy, Democracy, Distribution, Innovation, Literature
16 mars, 2013
Yesterday Kulturverkstan students held their project presentations at Frilagret, the new scene for youth culture in Göteborg.
During the first semester of the two-year education International Project Management within Culture, Kulturverkstan, the students get their very first large challenging task. They are formed in groups and together work with a real assignment presented by organizations in the local scene of Göteborg and west Sweden.
The projects have twofold meanings. It’s a way to study ”glocal” Göteborg, the local and global cultural scene in the city, and also a kick-start into the education and learning about project management. The projects end with an open presentation with invited colleagues, organizations, students, relatives, friends, and others.
And yesterday. in a full Frilagret in centre of Göteborg, the six presentations took place. Humouristic, professional, engaging presentations of their project work and their results. Impressive.
The six projects were:
Angered Boxing Club. How do low memebershipfees go together with organizing the largest boxing tournament? To show the importance of this meeting place, the warmth and feeling of community, the students decided to do a short documentary of the club focussing on the people.
A Göteborg for all (Ett Göteborg för alla). The inter-religious centre in Göteborg is a place where faith and dialogue over religious differences is in centre. The students assignment was to answer two questions: ”How can a more constructive dialogue of religion be held in the public sphere?” and ”What is a Göteborg for all?”. The students have formed a concept for a festival in May 2013 to answer this.
Frilagret. Frilagret offers an arena for young culture. The activities are put forward in dialogue with young people and one idea is a small exhibition room. The students work have led to an exhibition and discussion around ”What is art?”.
Humouristic political stunt. The project is a way to use humour in activism, in this case used to put the light on public transport ticket inspectors. Commissioner was researcher Majken Jul Sørensen, who focus on humour and political activism. The project was done in an action at the trams and a documentation of the process.
European Year for Active Aging and solidarity between generations. 2012 was the European Year for Active Aging and the students put together an touring exhibition with the message to politicians and decisionmakers to better encourage active aging.
TedxYouth@Järntorget. The TedxYouth@Järntorget have ambitions to create a meeting place for discussions and encourage young people to pursue their ideas. Everyone has a story worth telling! The students organized one of these events, 17th of November on the UN day for the Convention on the Rights of Children, the first of such meetings at Järntorget.
Categories: Artistic practice Blogg Creative spaces Cultural Policy Culture-led Development Education Entrepreneurship Kulturverkstan
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Policy, Cultural Project, Education, Entrepreneur, EU, Social entrepreneur
11 januari, 2013
The second pilot course Creative Entrepreneurship – Reaping the value out of your creative work has just finished its ten weeks program. Around 25 musicians, illustrators, visual artists, sculptors, storytellers, poets and more participated to review their ideas, reflect on their lifecycle, look ahead and finish with an eighteen months plan.
During the course they have had lectures of well-known artists in different art forms telling their lifecycle and sharing their experiences, and courses such as marketing, IP Rights, pricing, and others. On examination day well-known musician Makadem told his story, telling the group that challenges don’t stop. Every level has it’s own challenges, and it never stops.
The pilot program is run by GoDown Arts Centre. Nätverkstan has been one of the partners in building content and preparing for the start of the program with funding from Swedish Institute. The cooperation started in 2009.
Categories: Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Culture-led Development Education Entrepreneurship International Kenya
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Project, Economy, Education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, International exchange
28 december, 2012
Ghanian writer Kojo Laing talks softly but with emphasis. Every word comes from the heart and touches the heart of the audience. It’s the most generous and honest presentation I have heard in many years.
It’s like a curse, he says about writing. He can’t stop. He has tried to stop, but he just can’t.
Coming from a Christian family in Ghana, his father was a priest, and with all his five siblings working within the church, he is the only
one being a writer and also in pressing doubt in faith, something that is also topics in many of his books. He leans forward in his chair, looks over the audience, hitting his chest with his hand and asks, insisting on the honesty of this question: Am I a fool? Am I crazy having this doubt? Can anyone in the room say that they are anywhere near the doubt I have?
His writing is anything but a simple process, he tells us. One of the books took eight years to write. He wanted to write Ghanian and English, not for the sake of it, but because he wanted to squeeze out the English from the Ghanian languages. With his hands he shows us the guesture of thoroughly and hard squeezing water from wet laundry. And that took time. He picks up the book, shows it, and looks at it, exhausted. And goes quiet.
He answers each question posed by Kwani Trust Chairman Tom Maliti sometimes with a big smile of a question that he founds on the spot, then continues with a story and sometimes ends abruptly. The room gets quiet a short second before a new line of thought is unfolded.
Kojo Laing is like a ghost in his own country, he describes his situation. His books are mainly published outside of Ghana. But on the question if he would rather write something else, if he got the chance to re-do things, something less controversial that sold many, many copies of his books and made him more famous, his answer is distinct and clear. He couldn’t write anything else. This is what he writes.
A young woman raises her hand and asks what he suggests a young writer should think about pursuing a career as a writer?
Be yourself, is his first answer. Read as much as your brain can contain. The more you read, the more complex you become. And it applies to experience as well. Paradoxical experience. Encourage many identities. It will be needed as the world goes smaller.
And he adds and laughs: And when you get advices you reject them.
Kwani? Litfest 2012 is a yearly literature festival run by Kwani Trust in Nairobi. This year the theme is Conversations with the Horn. Writers, artists in exchange.
Categories: Art Artistic practice Blogg Creative spaces Cultural Journals Culture-led Development Entrepreneurship Kenya Literature Seminar
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Journal, Cultural Project, Development, International exchange, Literature
12 december, 2012
Christmas carols are on the schedule this afternoon and on stage of the outdoor assembly hall in the township Kogorocho in Nairobi, the young musicians are in deep concentration practicing for a show later on this week. And a small taste of the concert is given in an open session for whomever who would like to listen. Kids fill up the rows, together with a few others and us guests.
”Making music can make a difference” says Elisabeth Njoroge, Head of the Art of Music Foundation, the Foundation behind the project. Getting the chance to play an instrument, learning music, can actually change peoples lives, she says, and tells us examples of children from the slums who get a chance to play and how that has opened new possibilities and hope for a future.
Ghetto Classics, the project was named by the children, started in 2009 and has become an important contribution in the township. The foundation also runs the National Youth Orchestra in Kenya with the same ambition and conviction:
Music can make a difference in the lives of young Kenyans.
Nätverkstan, together with Ole Lützow-Holm, Assistant Professor at Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, are in Kenya to work together with GoDown Arts Centre on the education Creative Entrepreneurship. Read more of Nätverkstan’s cooperation in Kenya here.
Categories: Art Artistic practice Blogg Creative spaces Culture-led Development Democracy Education Entrepreneurship International Kenya
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Project, Democracy, Development, Education, Entrepreneur, International exchange, Social entrepreneur
10 december, 2012
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.
Categories: Art and Business Belgrade Blogg Communtiy Art Lab Creative spaces Education Entrepreneurship International
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Project, Education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, International exchange, Social entrepreneur
2 december, 2012
Have you ever heard the sound of money pooring into to your cash register? The sound is illustrated with a big ”Ka-tziing” (at least in Swedish…) when figures like Scrooge McDuck in the Donald Duck cartoons is pooring more gold coins into his already dense cashbox.
”Kablonk” documentary filmer Bengt Löfgren illustrated the sound of the few coins he could cash in after his large film projects…
Read more of the conference Ka-tziing here, enjoy the photos from the event and take a look at genvag.nu.
Photographer: Carina Gran, www.carinagran.se.
Categories: Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Creative spaces Distribution Economy Education Entrepreneurship Ka-tziing!
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Project, Distribution, Economy, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Self-employment, Social entrepreneur
20 november, 2012
Have you ever heard the sound of money pooring into to your cash register? The sound is illustrated with a big ”Ka-tziing” (at least in Swedish…) when figures like Scrooge McDuck in the Donald Duck cartoons is pooring more gold coins into his already dense cashbox.
”Kablonk” documentary filmer Bengt Löfgren illustrated the sound of the few coins he could cash in after his large film projects. Despite many successful film projects, winning prices and being shown on television, his pockets were still echoing empty he said with a smile. But you have to keep on, not wait for the money, and continue ”listen, learn, and develop” he concluded.
One of the stimulating points of the conference ”Ka-tziing!” in Göteborg on November 14, was when artists within film, literature, visual art, handicraft, performing arts, and music told short pecha-kucha stories of how they live on their art.
The conference and small market fair gathered 250 energetic and interested participants from art, culture, regional office, and organizations working with cultural entrepreneurship, to discuss, mingle, network, and get information of what Region Västra Götaland is doing to facilitate the entrepreneurial side of a cultural and artistic freelance work.
Guest key note speaker was Giep Hagoort, researcher of Utrecht School of the Arts (Holland), focussing on the entrepreneurial dimension of cultural and creative industries (also the title of his latest booklet), addressing the main point that all discussions and research on art and cultural entrepreneurship have to start in close relation to the actual artistic scene – to the practice.
Researchers have a tendency to sit in their ivory towers and not meet with the practice. To reach new interesting research, this needs to be challenged. And a quick hand-up on how many researchers this conference had attracted showed one person.
Perhaps no glimmering new solutions of how to get Ka-tziing instead of Kablonk in your pocket, but ideas, perspectives, inspiration, and a lot of time to mingle and look for connections among those who can support in how to a little better sustain yourself.
The conference was an initiative by Region Västra Götaland and Knep, an educational project run by Nätverkstan, supported by the European Social Fund. Funding the conference was European Social Fund and Region Västra Götaland. Performers during the day was Uttryckslabbet. Download the program here: Ka-tziing_inbjudan.pdf.
Categories: Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Culture-led Development Economy Education Entrepreneurship Incubator Ka-tziing! Seminar
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Project, Economy, Education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Research, Self-employment, Social entrepreneur, Västra Götaland
15 november, 2012
Since 2009 large and small newspapers around the world have been facing difficulties with drop in profit, drop in sales with job cuts as a result.
The latest in the line of newspaper cuts is Newsweek announcing earlier this fall the end of printed publication, and only going digital. December 31 is the last printed issue being distributed changing an eighty year chain of printed publications. The Independent as another example of a troubled newspaper and in the US the newspaper scene has changed drastically with papers like The Seattle Post-intelligencer, The Detroit News, and The San Francisco Chronicle and more severely being reduced and some closed down.
The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter has seen a drastic cut among employees and the latest news is that the other large daily Svenska Dagbladet has to save around 40 million SEK leading to cutting off it’s cultural pages and having around 50–60 employees are loosing their jobs.
Smaller newspapers are facing the same future. Nerikes Allehanda and Vestmanlands Läns Tidning, who both have the same owner, are cutting with 75 people during this year (read more here).
Times for newspapers and journals are dramatically changing. What is the future of printed press? Will heaps of printed books, journals, newspapers just be stored in piles collecting dust while the readers are elsewhere?
Cultural critic Olav Fumarola Unsgaard addresses this challenge and the future of print in an article at A-Desk Critical Thinking. He writes:
To understand the media landscape of today we must change our point of viewpoint. The world of printed media is today going through very rapid changes. To make it simple all these changes are in one way or another connected to digitalisation and the Internet. First of all we must understand that these changes have an impact on the entire sector of print. This means newspapers, journals, magazines, books and comics. It will affect the worldwide media conglomerates as well as the small fanzines. In the words of Joseph Schumpeter is there a massive creative destruction going on. Someone will lose and someone will gain.
Read the full article here.
Olav Fumarola Unsgaard is cultural journalist, book editor and project manager, also a former project manager for the long tail-project at Nätverkstan. Today mostly working with the Swedish publishing house Atlas and the journals Fronesis and Ord&Bild.
Categories: Art Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Cultural Journals Distribution Economy Entrepreneurship Literature Reports, articles and books
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creative Industries, crisis, Cultural economy, Cultural Journal, Development, Distribution, Economy, Entrepreneurship, Globalization, Literature, New economy, Transformation
7 november, 2012
Swedish photographer Mats Bäcker had a flying start of his career taking the legendary black and white photo of Iggy Pop at Dad’s Dancehall in Kopenhagen in 1977. Thirty-five years later the photo of Iggy Pop showing the finger to the audience sold at a famous Swedish Auction House for 56.000 SEK (6.489 euro).
He is driven by a feeling of ”it will go to hell anyway” and says that ”when the entrepreneur goes in, the artist goes out”. The entrepreneur and artist seem to be like a swingdoor in constant movement in his life.
During the one hour lecture at the six fulldays course on art and entrepreneurship hosted by Kulturlyftet and performed by Nätverkstan, Mats Bäcker tells a wonderful success-story full of worries and disbelief; a constant force to develop his artistic skill and challenging his perception in trying new things; networking; and, as he puts it ”good luck and a good gene to endure disappointments”.
The last is, he points out, how to live on your art. The other is to recycle. The artistic work he did when he started as a pop- and rockart photographer is used again, in new settings and imagery. Later as a performance photographer at the Opera in Stockholm he developed new ways of taking photos of movement. All can be used again in new playful ways.
”Recylce, recycle, recycle” he says with emphasis looking over the audience of illustrators, photographers, designers, filmers, and visual artists, and, he points out, not trying to do everything but instead choose your artistic form and work hard on this.
Categories: Art Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Economy Education Entrepreneurship Kulturlyftet Seminar The Art of living on Art
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Project, Economy, Education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship
9 oktober, 2012
Inspired by the Nordic colors (the Göteborg Book Fair has a Nordic theme this year) the space is now filled with around hundred cultural journals filled with articles on society, art, poetry, literature, feminism, language, food, film, philosophy and more.
The doors have opened to the fair which is already packed with literatureinterested people from all over Europe and elsewhere.
Categories: Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Cultural Journals Cultural Policy Democracy Distribution Entrepreneurship
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Journal, Cultural Policy, Cultural Project, Economy, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Literature
28 september, 2012
Today the Cultural Affair’s Committee in Region Västra Götaland is gathering to decide on the proposal of the regional culture plan for 2013-2015.
The culture plan is part of the new ”trunk model”, decided by the Swedish government in December of 2009, introduced, after another round of detail study in how this model should be performed, in 2011 to move (some) decisions of cultural investments from the state to the regions. This way, the argument is, the decisions are taken closer to each region’s citizens. Instead of the state deciding where money in a specific region should be spent, the region gets to decide.
1,2 billion SEK of the cultural budget is moved from the state to the regions. But to get the hands on the money, each region has to present a plan, a cultural plan, and inform and negotiate with the state, here handled by the Arts Council, on where to spend the money. This has of course caused a lot of discussions. Is the trunk model only a paper product, where the Arts Council is taking the real decisions? Are local politicians to be trusted? Do local politicians really know enough about art and culture to be able to decide on investments and make the difficult priorities needed?
Västra Götalandsregionen was at an early stage the role model for the trunk model. The negotiations between the Arts Council and Region Västra Götaland started earlier where the region did very well in negotiations and held a high profile in debates, discussions and visions of the role of art and culture in the region.
Now the region seems to have out-dated itself. The culture plan for 2013-2015 is without any vision and, to be a bit bold, not even readable, something also noted among many of the parties, including Nätverkstan, responding to the circulation of comment before the decision (se today’s daily Göteborgs-Posten). ”It’s a culture plan without a plan”, as David Karlsson puts it.
To the leaders of Region Västra Götaland’s culture affairs we are many that wonder: Where are you heading with arts and culture in the region?
Find attached the culture plan of Region Västra Götaland that is up for decision here: Västra Götalands kulturplan.pdf. See also Nätverkstan’s respond to the circulation here: remissvar vgr_kulturplan_120905.pdf. Read a post by Swedish Radio from 2010 here. And former posts here.
Categories: Art Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Cultural Policy Economy Nätverkstan
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Cultural economy, Cultural Policy, Cultural Project, Development, Västra Götaland
19 september, 2012
Kulturlyftet is a large European educational project started by KRO/KIF (The Swedish Artists’ National Organization and Swedish Handicraftartists and Industrial Designers, my translation) with the aim of offering a range of educational initiatives for their members.
The project offers courses in areas such as Media and Communication, Pedagogics, Culture and Availability, and Project- and Process work with Art and Culture in Focus.
Nätverkstan is responsible the course Artistic Practice and Entrepreneurship together with Republic Consulting. Last Monday we started and around fifteen participants; illustrators, photographers, publishers, filmmakers, will gather once a week for six weeks in WIP Konsthall in Årsta to dig deep into entrepreneurship and how to live on your artistic practice. Exciting!
Kulturlyftet is run by KRO/KIF in cooperation with Svenska Fotografers Förbund (Association of Swedish Professional Photographers), Svenska Tecknare (Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic Designers), and Konstnärscentrum Öst. Their members are photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, visual artists, and artists within handicraft and industrial design.
Categories: Art Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces Economy Education Entrepreneurship Kulturlyftet Nätverkstan The Art of living on Art
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Creativity, Cultural economy, Cultural Project, Economy, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship
5 september, 2012
Try to describe dance and choreography in words or text and you are bound for a challenge. To catch the essence of bodily movement and the artistic process and thought behind a dance performance is difficult. What you see is what you get, so to speak. Dance is best felt and experienced when it happens, it’s a direct contact between performer and audience. It’s therefore often difficult to try to describe dance experiences in project plans and evaluation documents.
In the newly published book 100 Exercises for a Choreographer and Other Survivors, a way around this difficulty is somehow found. You not only get practical exercises to try on your own, but each of these exercises quite informally also catches the artistic thought and process in choreography. Reading them, each ending with the sincere request ”Do it.”, exposes the experiments of action that can be translated into movements and dance. Quite shrewd, actually.
Perhaps something for policy- and decisionmakers? Trying these small experiments might raise your awareness and understanding of the artistic process. And it’s not complicated. Just do it.
Efva Lilja, choreographer, Professor of Choreography, and Vice-Chancellor at DOCH, the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, and author behind this, has just published two books with the aim to in a practical and poetic way offer strategies for active presence and bodily knowledge in your daily life.
The two books: ”100 Exercises for a Choreographer and Other Survivors” (both in Swedish and English) and ”Förstår du vad jag inte säger? Om dans som samhällsomstörtande kärleksförklaring” (”Do you understand what I am not saying? Dance as a subversive declaration of love” – in my translation) can be found here. Read also a related post on an editor’s view on quality and creativity here.
Categories: Art Artistic practice Blogg Cultural Policy Literature Performance
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Policy, Literature
19 augusti, 2012
Arts and handicraft in Sweden is getting a well-earned upswing. This year The National Association of Swedish Handicraft Societies celebrates 100 years with exhibitions and celebrations of what arts and crafts have meant for households and villages in Sweden and how this art form has developed. In Stockholm Liljevalchs Konsthall show the Jubilee exhibition and around the country cities and villages show handicraft exhibitions.
Halmens Hus, The House of Straw, in Bengtsfors, a small town by right by one of the many lakes inDalsland, is an exhibition hall and boutique celebrating the straw. Making household decorations, adornment, hats, and many other things out of straws left over from the harvest was an important side income for many households on the countryside during the 19thcentury. The work was well organized and in some areas a small industry grew of women doing straw craft on commission. Beda Bohlin was one such initiator, in today’s vocabulary she would be called project manager. She led courses in straw craft during the summer season and worked as straw craft adviser in wintertime.
She was the contact person between the association for straw craft and its members. She biked around with orders of straw hats, left material, and gave professional advise. In the middle of 1940s, the crafters could earn up to 3000 SEK a year from this commissioned work, a substantial amount of money at the time. A similar story is found on the West Coast of Sweden where knitting had the same function. In the 1930s another lady, Augusta Teng, led knitting courses for knitters around the coast, marketed and sold the products. She contacted the wife of the County Governor, Emma Jacobsson, who helped them. This way the well-known and successful company Bohus Stickning started, selling designed knitted sweathers, hats, gloves made by knitters along the coast on an international market.
In Dalsland elementary school teacher Erland Borglund, started Stenebyskolan, the School for Crafts and Design,in 1934 with the aim to ”create a school where hand and mind were equal, a strong basis for craft”. Today the school is part of the University of Gothenburg.
Crafters from the school started Not Quite in 2001, the artist collective based in Fengersfors, and together with Dalslans Konstmuseum, Halmens Hus, Stenebyskolan and many other initiatives in the area, Dalsland is an important area for sustaining and development of arts and crafts. Work from artists based in the area is also shown at the Jubilee exhibition, among them woodwork by artist Jonatan Malm.
Categories: Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Creative Industries Creative spaces
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creative Industries, Cultural economy, Economy, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Self-employment, Social entrepreneur
30 juli, 2012
For those interested in trying the New York Art world, the magazine New York (April 30 2012) is giving some handy tips in a nineteen rules handbook. Maybe worth looking through…?
Rule no:
1. Reject the Market. Embrace the Market. Hm. That contradiction. Always present.
2. Stay on Trend…Things we’ve seen a lot of lately, New York says, is Trash art, Cindy Sherman-esque, Neon Words, Candy-Colored Sculpture and Video-Game Art…
3. Make Art That’s Difficult to Collect. So only Museums will collect it. Example: Sarah Sze‘s The Art of Losing.
4. Be Young, Post-Black, and From Chicago. Examples to follow: Theaster Gates and Rashid Johnson.
5. Survive With your head down. Artist Alex Katz (84) remember how it was: ”A lot of people respect me” he says ”But people used to really hate my work. As late as 1975, I had a show in Paris and people were screaming in the gallery. They were saying this is terrible art and I should go back to art school”. Sort of Don’t Give Up.
6. Outsource to China. Artist Kahinde Wiley came to Beijing in 2006 and has set up a studio which has become his main production hub and second home.
7. Know These 100 people. An insider’s list of art insiders. The necessary list of gallerists if you are to make it in New York or perhaps the US…
8. Don’t Be Afraid to Trade Up. When a bigger gallery comes calling, listen. Since the recession, three powerhouse galleries have been especially aggressive in grabbing talent. And those are: David Swirner, Larry Gagosian, Sean Kelly.
9. Show up. Mainly: When you mingle and network, make sure you are caught on photos (and look cool…).
10. Pick Your Artists and Stick with Them. Whole-life art patronage – collecting work is just the start.
11. Buy the Same Thing Everyone Else is Buying. A shoppinglist would include, according to New York and art collector Adam Lindemann: Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, among others.
12. Get Born into It. The inheritance class.
13. Don’t Let a Gallerist Take Half the Profit. The collective gallery Reena Spaulings is an example of how to organize and show work in a different manner.
14. Be Ruthless. Making a killing in the art world’s dark market.
15. Pretend You’re and Outsider Even When You’re at the Center of Everything. The gallery Family Business is a gallery – but not.
16. Pack Your Bags, Fly Around the World, and Hang Out With Everyone You Know From New York.
17. Be Everywhere at Once (But Rarely New York). On the same theme as Rule no 16. Be there but look busy.
18. Join the Establishment. Cling to Your Street Cred.
19. There Are No Rules. Break barriers. Do what you have to do.
Categories: Art Art and Business Artistic practice Blogg Distribution Economy Entrepreneurship International Reports, articles and books
Etiketter:Artist, Artistic practice, Cultural economy, Economy, USA
11 juni, 2012
The thirty-five students at the final year at Kulturverkstan, the two-year International Culture Project Management Training Programme, just finished their seminars of their final internships and are at this moment celebrating their examination dinner.
As always the students have held a variety of interesting seminars on topics they have studied during their internship. Independent Culture House, gentrification, industrial cool – What does the connections look like?, A music life for all?, The heterogenic team, Participation and engagement within performing arts are just a small selection of all the different topics, all interesting to dig into.
Figures from the last group of graduated students (June 2011) shows that 82% got jobs or run their own business within the field they educated for. Many of the jobs are project work, either short- or longterm, but still. We are quite proud.
Read the different seminar topics here (in Swedish): Program_Kulturverkstan.pdf.
Categories: Artistic practice Creative spaces Education Entrepreneurship Kulturverkstan
Etiketter:Artistic practice, Creativity, Cultural Project, Education, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship
1 juni, 2012
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