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Description
Festivals and cultural institutions from the contemporary art and audiovisual sector are currently facing many Covid-19 crisis-related challenges which they often have to deal with on their own. The challenges include issues such as changing landscape of sponsor relations and decreasing funding opportunities, a necessity to transfer cultural events online and a need to learn new technical skills and navigate in the online environment on the fly, a necessity to be extra creative and stay relevant and close to audiences, managing teams in uncertain times and keeping them motivated even in the era of Zoom meetings and many others.
Sharing know-how, ideas and inspiration with like-minded institutions and cooperating across the cultural spectrum (film festivals, modern dance, new circus, musical events etc.) can be very enriching. The main aim of the project is therefore to create a platform for cultural organisations and to provide the members of the platform with a specific set of information and training relevant to the current cultural environment. Thanks to sharing of know-how and building of capacities through seminars, training workshops and working meetings, the platform members will be able to better navigate the dynamically changing cultural field in the current conditions of the Covid-19 crisis and in post-Covid times.
Project activities include: workshop focusing on the most pressing topics, one-to-one meetings with experts, fundraising conference, training workshop focused on presentation skills, and fundraising event - opportunity to present the organisations to potential donors. The project is organised in partnership with Bergen International Film Festival, which will act as a consultant, help with research and finding the topics and experts. BIFF will have a significant role as they themselves organise a Film Audience Development Conference to discuss the themes revolving around developing and retaining audiences and other topics related to the project.
Summary of project results
The project contributed to the interlinking of information about smaller cultural non-state, non-profit initiatives that are dealing with societal issues in their regions, and to the visibility of their activities. We mapped the platform of their operation and organized a meeting of its representatives. The challenge was to map during the ongoing co-vid, when many initiatives functioned differently and the "terrain of investigation" was dynamically changing or, on the contrary, stagnating.
Summary of bilateral results
The project partner was "Harpefoss Hotell Kunstarena" from Norway. The project contributed to the mutual promotion of partners in the resonant context of smaller regional key players with a social and environmental focus. We published an interview with the partner''s director Eivind Slettemeas in the printed and online map, the representative’s curator Ewa Jacobsson gave a keynote at the final forum, the intern Karina Sletten had a performance with the Czech collective phonon there, too. All partner’s representatives had the opportunity to meet some Czech representatives in person. In particular, the informal debates that the personal meetings of the partners made possible contributed to mutual learning about a similar platform in both countries and the search for further cooperation. The intern and the curator of the partner organization met for the first time in Prague, and we have information that the meeting inspired their next joint project.