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Description
The Shake Down is a culture development and artistic exchange project designed to inspire and empower a cohort of young people to work with art, curating and festival making. 10 teenagers, from Norway and Latvia, will participate in a 14 month mentoring that will lead them to co-curating two international performing arts festivals. The project consists of an online community, formed and maintained by the young people, mentored and inspired by some of the world''s leading curators and artists. Online community will meet at least twice a month with workshops and conversations targeting all aspects of festival curation, production, dramaturgy, artist management and design. The online community will lead to two intensive training and exchange periods in each country, with the teens, artist mentors and guest workshops leaders. The Shake Down festivals will take place within the frame of “Homo Novus” (at least 20% of the overall program) and a stand alone festival at Rosendal Theatre in April of 2023.
Summary of project results
This project was needed, because over the course of 2 years it allowed to invest in and observe the creative development of 10 teenagers in the field of artistic creation, curation and production of contemporary performing arts and festivals. This was a very important project for The New Theatre Institute and Rosendal Teater in its work towards engaging all kinds of people of different ages, backgrounds, abilities and orientations. It was fantastic to do this on an international scale with all of the brilliant knowledge that we were exposed to. Both partners and the participants are more connected internationally, nationally and locally as a result of this project. We have a bigger and broader network professionally and socially and are a far better place to continue work of this nature into the future.
It was an opportunity to gain experience of working in a professional environment, where teenagers could use their own authentic voice, leave an impact according to their knowledge/values/experience/vision of the world and exchange with other peers and compare at least two (there were more nationalities represented) cultural, national backgrounds. Most of the participants continue their path in the arts, performing arts and/or closely related to the cultural field (already within a year after the project ended, we see teenage participants of the project entering universities to study performing arts, organizing their own theatre and participatory projects, at least three of them have made their debut in culture journalism, reviewing works of other youth projects; they can articulate their opinion and compare their experience to other peers, and are motivated to boost other youth-lead culture participation and experimental pop-up projects as an absolute necessity in the culture field and city life where young publics and their opinions have been underrepresented ; the teens have obtained the experience of working internationally and are able to share it with their local peers which is often not the case among young people. The new generation of young curators and their original ideas is an invaluable contribution to our organizations (New Theatre Institute of Latvia, Rosendal Teater). It will leave a lasting impact on our work and cements our approach to engaging teenagers in deep and meaningful ways as significant contributors. We believe that the gained experience will be continued, in the role of mentors and production assistants or joining particular projects, thus assuring the continuity of youth oriented focus and involvement in the future festivals.
During the project 10 teenagers, 4 mentors, 2 producers, 2 production managers, 2 project leaders created activities: 2 international residentials, 2 “The Shake Down” programmes for international festivals (International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus” and International Art Festival “Bastard”) in Latvia and Norway, one web page the-shake-down.com, including links to Instagram, TikTok, Podcast accounts.
Summary of bilateral results
Even though the cultural differences, different economic and educational backgrounds were some of the greatest challenges during the process, the bilateral partnership made the participants look at themselves from an external perspective, learn to communicate their adherence and values, and find the common and unifying goals, especially regarding inclusivity of vulnerable groups or particular social issues and experiences that teens are facing in both countries. We couldn’t have realised the same shaped project without the strong and equal collaboration that we had. Both NTIL and Rosendal Teater admitted to each other that we think of each other as “extremely brilliant organisation with an enormous competency, vision and drive”.It was a true collaboration. We pulled together where it was needed and equally stretched and challenged each other in ways that really pushed the project to reach its full potential. We reached large audiences, we deeply engaged the teenagers and created artistic projects that would never have happened without the project. All this translates into knowledge and networks that will have wide reaching ripples for both organisations and the field we are a part of .NTIL and Rosendal Teater would gladly continue the collaboration between the two organizations and are keen to search for new possibilities.