A theatrical journey through Europe

The Orient Express will begin its European journey in Ankara in May 2009. In a converted freight car, theatre ensembles from six european countries will perform plays in their own language at 11 different locations during their journey. Following the premiere in their hometown, each ensemble will travel by train to the next city where it will perform again and meet up with the next ensemble, which, in turn, will perform its premiere. In terms of content, the theatre project examines "European identity", expectations of and past experience with the European unification process, and issues like escape, expulsion, mobility and settling down. Following stops in Turkey, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Germany, the train will arrive at its final destination two months later - the port of Stuttgart. There, all the participants will meet once again at a theatre festival and perform their pieces on the rolling stage.

Artistic director: Christian Holtzhauer
Directors: Christian Tschirner (DE), Alexandru Boureanu (RO), Predrag Štrbac (RS), Tijana Zinajic (HR, Mustafa and Övül Avkiran (TR)
Writers: Mustafa and Övül Avkiran (TR), Matéi Visniec (RO), Branko Dimitrijevic (RS), Tena Štivicic (HR), Goran Stefanovski (SLO), Soeren Voima (DE)

Venues and schedule:
International theatre train with stops in Istanbul, Bukarest, Craiova, Temeswar, Novi Sad, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Nova Gorica: 14 May-5 July 2009;
Festival in Stuttgart: 9-19 July 2009

Preparation of working group meeting in December

To freshen up the memory: The European Union published last year a “New European Agenda for Culture” which is a first attempt to create a common European Cultural Politics. To be able to transfer this political theory in practice the European Commission made a call for an open dialogue with the civil society. This dialogue was about to take place in two discussion platforms: One focusing on “Access to Culture” and the other one on “Potential for Cultural and Creative industries”. Arts institutions were able to apply to take part in the platforms. ETC applied and was accepted in the two platforms.

During the first Platform meetings in Brussels the 5-6 June there were a couple of working groups created. The ETC takes part in the following working groups:

Platform: Access to Culture

Working group: Access in the creativity and production process

Platform: Potential for Cultural and Creative Industries

Working group: Circulation of Artists and Artistic works

For the working group “Access in the creativity and production process” we have two assignments for the next meeting in December.

1. Write a short statement on what creativity and access to culture means to your organisation/sector

2. Give one case study of any example of when access is working well, and one case study of when access is or has been working badly

Discussion: Access to Culture

This is the assignment for the “Access to Culture” group 5 gave to themselves to start the work.

Each participant will deliver a short statement about what creativity, innovation means to them (their members etc) in terms of access.

Each participant will deliver one “bad example” and one “good example” of access in their own sector.

ETC members please comment here or send email (to the delegation) if you have thoughts and ideas about these assignments! Please read the previous blog posts to get more information on the first platform meetings.

Report from the first platform meetings

On the first day the 5^th of June the meeting on the platform “Access to Culture” was held.

The mission of the day, for the cultural structures that have been selected to participate in the platforms, was create a self governing body. In the end of the day we were well organised and three working groups with different focuses were formed:

1. Creation / production

2. Participation / audience

3. Education / learning

The ETC takes part in the first group, Creation and production. This is how the group defined their coming work after a first discussion: The group decided to favor a “pragmatic approach” to ensure access throughout the cycle of “creation and production” by identifying obstacles and to find possible “solutions” to them.

There was a discussion in group 1 whether a definition of the ‘use of creativity’ was needed or not. Since the commission has stressed that the “value of culture” is the base for the new European Agenda, I was against the fact of keeping these kinds of discussions that might take the focus of the actual goal, to make pragmatic propositions to the commission. However, the representative from the commission meant that it might be good to keep a discussion about the “need of creativity” since this is not totally clear for the commission. Is it really our job to define the need of creativity, when a common European Cultural politics is already under construction?

The 6 of June the meeting there was meeting for the platform for “Potential for creative and cultural industries”. This was a more problematic platform where there was an immediate conflict between the cultural sector and the more “industrial” parts of the culture: music, edition etc.

There were five working groups created during the day:

1. Regulatory environment

2. Support for the development of SMEs

3. Exchange/export

4. Use of the European dimension of the circulation of artists and cultural products

5. The interface of artistic creation and the cultural industries

The ETC takes part in group 4 and group 5. The last group will discuss the differences between the artistic creation and the cultural industries. This might be a more constructive discussion of creativity since it has a direct goal and starting point.