Call for participation in “MAKE A MOVE” – TÂRGU-MUREȘ Lab

by Make a Move | Oct 28, 2019 | News

Call for participation in “MAKE A MOVE” – Târgu-Mureș Lab:
Deadline: 15th November 2019

An Art incubator for contemporary European non-institutionalised and independent theatre

Posted on 28th October 2019

CALLING ALL ROMANIAN AND HUNGARIAN PHYSICAL THEATRE MAKERS!

The University of Arts Târgu-Mureș, Romania, is calling independent theatre artists/collectives to participate in one module of the Lab in Târgu-Mureș – “InsideOut – Positioning non-institutionalised theatre practices in a critical journalistic and business context” that will be held from 9th until 19th December 2019 in Târgu-Mureș, Romania, as part of the international project Make a Move – An Art Incubator for contemporary European non-institutional and independent theatre. Up to 10 artists from Romania and Hungary will be selected through this call, and these artists will join a core group of 10 international artists for the Artistic Module of the Târgu-Mureș Lab from 9th to 16th December 2019.

The call is aimed at all independent theatre makers, be it individual artists or member of collectives (companies), from Romania and Hungary, working in the field of contemporary movement-based theatre practices (such as physical theatre, mime, improvisational theatre and other forms with a strong relation to the body and movement).

The Artistic Module of the Lab in Târgu-Mureș will have a focus on the added value of interculturality and will include:

different artistic practices, approaches, creative processes and methodologies of co-creation;
exchange of knowledge, skills and experiences among local, regional and international participants on subjects of artistic excellence and audience development;
working with different focus groups such as students and university staff;
preparation and work on shorter project ideas in co-creation with international, regional and local artists;
work-in-progress presentations for local audiences, media and relevant local and national cultural policy makers and stakeholders;

The overall ‘Make a Move’ project objective is to contribute to the revitalisation of European theatre by mobilising the unutilised creative and innovative potential of non-institutionalised and independent theatre practices, such as physical theatre, corporeal mime and improvisational theatre.

The strategy to achieve this is to develop and test an innovative incubating environment in which non-institutionalised and independent theatre practitioners will have the opportunity to develop their artistic and professional skills, and grow their production proposals through co-creation processes in collaboration with international and local artists.

The project will cover the travel, accommodation and subsistence costs of the successful applicants to this call.

The project is Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

Eligibility Criteria

Artists from the field of movement-based theatre practices and/or with a strong relation to the body and movement in their artistic practice

Artists who are residents in Romania and Hungary, working freelance and/or in collectives (companies) that are registered in the above-named countries

Collectives (companies) with eligibility for funding in their country of residence is a requirement

Very good written and spoken English skills

Applicants should be over 18 years old

Overall criteria

An interest in being a part of transnational collaboration and co-creation process

An interest in building capacities in the areas of artistic excellence and audience development

A commitment to networking and further developing international cooperation projects

Opportunities

Working in an international context

Improving professional skills

Peer learning, education and training

Improving career opportunities to work internationally

Accessing new markets, creating network possibilities, building partnerships and contacts

Reaching new and wider audiences

Programme and Calendar

This Call relates to the Positioning non-institutionalised theatre practices in a critical journalistic and business context Lab in Târgu-Mureș, in particular activities that will be held from 9th till 15th of December (dates exclude travel dates for non-Târgu-Mureș artists).

The Lab in Târgu-Mureș will take place in the locations provided by the University of Arts, Târgu-Mureș.

During the Lab, an artist will have the opportunity to collaborate and co-create with nineteen (19) other artists – ten (10) international artists and nine (9) artists from Romania and Hungary.

The co-creation activity will culminate in a work-in-progress presentation on 14th December 2019. This will be an event in which participating ‘Make a Move’ artists will perform and interact with the local audience to receive feedback on the work that they developed in the Lab.

Terms and Conditions

All expenses will be covered, including travel, accommodation and subsistence (meals provided or per diem).

Artists will be expected to collaborate with the resident artists both in the Artistic Module (to co-create a work-in-progress presentation) and in the ‘action research’ element of the project: The ‘Make a Move’ project includes an academic research component that will document and analyse the labs as a model and methodology. Researchers from EU academic institutions (project partners) will be attending each lab as observers and will develop their research in close collaboration and consultation with the artists, through questionnaires and focus groups.

Application process

Please apply by filling in the online application form that includes your personal details, short biography, motivation letter, CV(s), reference(s) and links to examples of your work.

The deadline for applications is 4pm (GMT+2) on November 15th, 2019.

Selection process

An interim decision will be made based on artistic quality, potentially including follow-up interview via Skype.

The applicants will be informed about the final results, including waiting list by November 20th, 2019.

During December 2019, the selected Artists will be contracted by the project.

Apply here:

Apply

Application documentation:

Download

For more information, email us on makeamoveuat@gmail.com (Subject: MAM Call Inquiry for Târgu-Mureș Lab/Informații referitoare la Apelul MAM pentru Laboratorul din Târgu-Mureș).

About the Art Incubator

The pilot execution of the Art Incubator will take place in three consecutive sessions in Galway (Ireland), Rijeka (Croatia) and Târgu-Mureș (Romania) during the course of 2019. The duration of each Art Incubator session/ Labs will be 10 days. The envisaged number of participants is 10 full-time artists that will be selected through a public call. Participants can either be individual independent theatre makers or members of the collective (company) selected to participate. For each session, another 10 participants will be selected, as auditing participants, from the local/regional non-institutionalised and independent theatre community.

Each Lab foresees a co-creation laboratory to enable immediate implementation of newly acquired skills, while benefiting from the interaction and networking with peers, mentors, international audiences and representatives of the respective European Capitals of Culture.

Each Lab will be conducted under a specific topic that is linked both with the curriculum, the specific location and the agenda of each European Culture Capital, illustrating a key element of the non-institutionalised and independent theatre agenda and identity.

Make a Move Art Incubator Galway – Digital Practices

The first session of the Art Incubator will focus on digital practices, both from a business point of view and an artistic point of view. The artistic element of the curriculum in Galway will introduce participants to artists who create work using digital technologies – for example, sensor-based interactions, mixed-reality experiences and virtual reality experiences. Through practical workshops with these artists the practitioners will have the opportunity to experiment with these technologies to understand how they can be incorporated artistically into their own work. This aspect of the curriculum will again draw on the artistic connections established through the Galway 2020’s ‘Windows on the World’ programme, a programme of work specifically oriented towards the creation of artistic work using digital technologies.

The business element of the curriculum in Galway will draw on Galway 2020’s aim to become the first ‘Virtual European Capital of Culture’, and will include workshops and talks with the Galway-based theatre artists and digital media experts on the process of incorporating a digital outreach element in their work. For example, participants will examine practices such as the ‘live streaming’ of theatre performances, and the creation of cross-media platforms that support the creation and dissemination of live performance work. It is also our intention that participants will learn tools and practices that will enable them to incorporate a digital element into the design and dissemination of their own work during the ‘Make a Move’ project, which will also feed into the overall project communication and dissemination activities.

During the Galway session, the participating artists will begin the process of identifying project ideas for follow-up cooperation projects after the conclusion of the Make a Move project. Idea identification, formulation and conservation will be conducted in the context of a series of three workshops – to take place at each Art Incubator session throughout the year 2019 – on project development and project fundraising. Throughout the series, the participants will learn about the topic of cultural funding policies in EU countries, challenges that non-institutional and independent theatre practitioners face in the frame of these policies and identifying ways how to manage those challenges. Recognised experts in the field will lead the workshops.

Make a Move Art Incubator Rijeka – Site-specific theatre practices and audiences

The second session of the Art Incubator will focus on the topic of site-specific theatre and progressive audience outreach practices in theatre, specifically on the topic of public space and urban locations as places for artistic exploration, work and interaction with the audiences. Within artistic elements of the curriculum in Rijeka, public spaces will be explored as site-specific theatre locations, places for artistic interventions, installations, community art works and other possible forms of contemporary theatre and performing arts practices. In collaboration with an expert historian of Rijeka who will lead a study visit of several Rijeka’s locations, and in partnership with cultural experts on audience development, artists will be developing their projects inside the frame of specific locations in Rijeka that have a strong meaning for the community either past, present and/or future. This topic of public space(s) is related to Rijeka 2020 programme that encourages progressive audience development practices by proposing a vision where ”urban areas become spaces where artistic projects are created in collaboration with the local community”. During the Rijeka session, the participating artists will continue the process of new project idea identification, formulation and development initiated at the first fundraising workshop during the Art Incubator session in Galway.

Make a Move Art Incubator Targu – Mures: InsideOut – Positioning non-institutionalised theatre practices in a critical journalistic and business context

The third session of the Art Incubator is dedicated to the topics of communication, business and fundraising skills. Many times artists find it difficult to talk about their work, which sometimes results in interviews or performance presentations filled with platitudes. Considering this, it may be difficult for theatre artists and collectives (companies) to promote their work, to gain finances and further to market the performance for the audience. Therefore this Art Incubator session is dedicated to presenting a multi-perspective approach to talking about the artistic product, considering ways of ‘translating’ the artistic universe into words, using tools from the areas of theatre criticism, journalism and/or aesthetics. At the same time product ‘storytelling’ will be considered from the point of view of many different audiences and assessed from the business and management perspective, accompanied with tips and tricks from cultural management professionals. The Art Incubator session in Targu-Mures will conclude the process of developing the first set of joint follow-up cooperation proposals coming out of the Art Incubator participants projects. The goal is to finish the development of at least 5 cooperation projects, arriving at the stage of having a clearly defined project idea coupled with a business plan for the project idea execution, including potential funding opportunities.

REVIEW OF THE RIJEKA LAB

by Make a Move | Oct 18, 2019 | News

The Rijeka Art Incubator on “Site-specific Theatre Practices and Audiences” took place from September 10th – 19th in Rijeka organised by the Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre KRILA from Rijeka. It brought the group of ten (10) selected resident artists together with ten (10) local and regional artists: Sendi Bakotić (Rijeka), Andrea Crnković (Rijeka), Maja Kalafatić (Celje/Beograd), Nika Korenjak (Ljubljana/Zagreb), Iva Korbar (Zagreb), Maja Kovač (Zagreb), Frane Meden (Pula), Uroš Mladenović (Novi Sad), Kristina Paunovski (Rijeka), Miljena Vučković (Novi Sad). The entire lab featured twenty (20) artists from nine (9) European countries: Austria, Croatia, France, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain.

The goals of the Rijeka Lab were:

Resident artists to share their creative practices and explore their creative ideas among themselves and in collaboration with artistic collaborators of the Lab (Artistic Module – 1st part)
Participating artists to share their created works in the form of work in progress presentation on 17th Sep 2019 (Artistic Module – 2nd part) and get some feedback from the local audiences.
To raise awareness among participating artists of unutilized creative and innovative potential of the contemporary theatre practices in developing audiences (Audience Development element)
To identify follow-up cooperation projects among the Make a Move Art Incubator participants (Business Module)

Rijeka Lab was comprised of two modules: Artistic and Business Module through which the element of Audience Development was imbued. The Artistic Module focused on the exchange of different contemporary performance practices and artistic approaches within the context of site-specific theatre. Following the topic of the Lab, Artistic Director Ivana Peranić and her team of artistic collaborators Monica Giacomin and Fernanda Branco divided locations, that include some of Rijeka’s valuable cultural heritage sites, into three sub-categories:

Natural environment: Mill Žakalj alongside the river Rječina.
Public spaces: shop window, old shopping mall rooftop, and surrounding streets.
Historical building: Opera (Teatro Fenice).

On the first day of the Lab, after the Official launching, resident artists were taken on a Walking Tour of the city and its surrounding witnessing for the first time the locations they would be working on in the following days. The tour was led by the art historian Ivana Golob who gave the artists historical, social and architectural inputs with the intention to spark the imagination and inspire the artists in their artistic creations. The information had also the purpose of offering to the artists a grounded knowledge of the sites as a site-specific strategy of work, based on learning about the place one visits and works on. This approach aimed to provide the artists with contextual tools, so they could relate to a place not only from the present but also with historical references, aiming for a wider understanding and respect for the location.

On the second day, as part of the Audience Development element, there was a facilitated talk and sharing: “Levels of Engaging with the Audiences” led by Artistic Director Ivana Peranić. The talk highlighted the numerous creative practices and approaches to audiences among participating artists in terms of (1) number of the audience: from one to hundreds of people, (2) place: using different types of non-conventional theatre spaces, (3) contexts such as: festivals, artistic productions, urban and countryside, political demonstration/protest (4) age and ability (5) social status and level of inclusion/exclusion (6) intention such as: random audiences or people who intentionally come to an event. Some important issues were raised such as artist as a social worker, the necessity of selling tickets, the importance of critics and partnerships, (re)-defining terms of professional and non-professional artists.

Artistic Module was based on co-creation methodology and it was divided into two distinctive parts.

During the first part (11th-14th Sep) resident artists were working in smaller groups interacting with specific sites and creating an artistic responses and expressions from it as: methodology of work and/or different performative works such as performative installation, collage of artistic proposals, roof performance using wireless headphones and binoculars for the audience and shop window performance.

During the second part (15th-17th Sep) resident artists met with the local and regional artists whom they presented their creative processes and artistic proposals, and local and regional artists presented themselves and their artistic approaches and creative works. Each local and regional artist chose a group of resident artists and a location according to their artistic preferences.

On the 16th September 2019, there wes a second facilitated talk “Challenges of managing audiences in non-conventional theatre spaces” where participating artists shared and exchanged their experiences on the topic but also considered the concrete example of the work-in-progress presentation of the following day.

All artistic works were shared with the local audience in the format of work-in-progress presentations on 17th September 2019. Durational performance “I’m Listening” in the shop window created by Nicole Pschetz and Miguel Bonneville with the collaboration of Maja Kalafatic and Miljena Vuckovic was open for the public from 1.00 – 03.00 p.m. Citizens of Rijeka were invited to share their wishes and concerns with St. Vito who is a patron saint of Rijeka Other works were presented in the form of an artistic guided tour, taking audiences from one location to another from 5.30 – 8.30 p.m.: (1) Rijeka’s Roof took audiences on the roof of the shopping mall in the city center telling a story of the superheroes who are out of luck and out of work. Audiences were following them from above as they wandered through the city wondering what to do next and what “saving the planet” even means anymore. The work was created by Rodrigo Pardo and James Riordan in collaboration with Uroš Mladenović and Iva Korbar. Upon getting down from the roof audience was picked up by a character wearing beach accessories and inviting the audience to go for a swim presenting (2) Last Summer, a minimalistic performance in a shop window as a “corporeal reflection about a good time with you”. The work was created by Dmitri Rekatchevski in collaboration with Frane Meden. Another character called Xmas Tree invited the audience to follow her and led the audience through tiny streets of the city center, stopping briefly in front of the Rijeka 2020 installation at the Jadran Square, before heading for the Opera (Teatro Fenice) were many other Rijeka citizens and media were already waiting. One could feel the excitement in the air since this place was opening its door for the general public for the first time after almost three decades! The work presented in the Opera was (3) And Then There Was a Space – fragments of a transformation created and performed by Julianna Bloodgood, Anne Corte, Johannes Schrettle, Sanna Karolina Toivanen, Janaina Tupan, Sendi Bakotić, Andrea Crnković, Nika Korenjak, Maja Kovač, and Kristina Paunovski. The response of the Rijeka citizens and media was very positive. The interest was immense but unfortunately, there was only one performance due to the context of the Lab.

Inside of the Business Module (18th and 19th Sep) participants worked on the process of developing an effective and competitive grant proposal and facing financial and managerial challenges after a successful grant application. The fundraising element was led by Barbara Rovere and the Financial management element was led by Adam Jeanes. Both experts were available for individual consultations throughout the Module.

The Rijeka Art Incubator was programmed and led by Artistic Director Ivana Peranić. The Art Incubator was documented and assessed by three researchers: Lia Contiu (UAT), Anda Cadariu (UAT) and Alessandra Troncone (IAB), and it was evaluated as part of wider project evaluation by the project external evaluators Darko Lukic and Cristina Da Milano.