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Description
In order to incorporate contemporary art in the daily life of schools,the LLCA has approached 6actively working Latvian artists who are interested and motivated to work with the audience of children/young people and to develop an inclusive product of contemporary culture to spend 1-3 months in residencies in 6 different Latvian schools.The themes of the works of art, their social problematics will be chosen in close collaboration with children/young people and will relate to the history of the school/locality and local studies,and the artists'' working methods will involve artistic research,in-depth communication with the target audience and the creation of the works with the participation of the students.The result of the art residencies–6 separate interdisciplinary contemporary art projects will be included in the 2023 programme of the International Contemporary Art Festival SURVIVAL KIT as a contemporary art exhibition/project presentation made by the children and young people themselves.These works will be documented and posted on the project''s online platform and will serve a source of inspiration for artists and art institutions abroad.The project foresees a support and mentoring programme for the project''s artists as well as a cycle of lectures for pedagogues to get to know contemporary art,the publication of a practical teachers'' guide on the use of contemporary art and methods of informal education in school curricula,and these resources will be created in close collaboration with schools, students, artists and partner contemporary art organisations from Norway.While art residencies in schools are an innovative practice for Latvia,they are being realised in some places internationally.The aim of the residency programme is to turn this into a format that is sustainable in Latvia in the future and to organise such residencies in Latvia each year,inviting artists to put forward their candidacies as well as schools to apply to take advantage of this opportunity.
Summary of project results
After Covid-19 Pandemic, the main aim of this project was to start new, innovative practice in Latvia and develop inclusive contemporary culture products - art residencies in 6 Latvian schools – regular creative workshops for school children and creation of artworks together with professional visual artists. These art residencies in schools were an innovative practice in Latvia, that strengthened Latvian artists'' capacity to work with school communities and enriched local school programs and education system with contemporary art methods, creation of visual participatory art projects and collaboration between school sector and professional contemporary culture sector.
This project included 6 different schools in peripheral regions of Latvia that had small or no experience with contemporary art, this project reduced social exclusion and raised understanding of different contemporary art methods and practices. Moreover, not only involving kids, artists and art mediators, but teachers themselves too to widen society''s understanding about contemporary art. We implemented 6 residencies in 6 different Latvian schools. 6 artists worked in close collaboration with children and young people and co-created 6 artworks for exhibition in International Contemporary Art Festival SURVIVAL KIT 14. Additionally, these works was documented and posted on the project''s online platform and now serve a source of inspiration for artists and art institutions internationally.
An international summer school – camp for children and young people was organized in Latvia for the first time as well – it took place over five days in Valmiera municipality, with the project''s artists together with Norwegian artists providing everyone with the opportunity to experience contemporary art in close cooperation.
Meanwhile a mentoring programme for the project''s artists as well as a cycle of lectures for pedagogues to get to know contemporary art was implemented in framework of this project. A practical Toolkit – online source / teachers'' guide on the use of contemporary art and methods of informal education in school curricula was created in the final phase of this project. All these valuable resources was created in close collaboration with schools, students, artists and partner contemporary art organizations from Norway – Tenthaus, and many others. All these activities was important because such resources and initiatives was implemented in our country for the first time. While art residencies in schools was an innovative practice for Latvia, they are being realised in some places internationally. The aim of the residency programme was to turn this into a format that is sustainable in Latvia in the future and to organize such residencies in Latvia regularly. In the project''s conclusion, we organized 5 seminars in each of Latvia''s regions, presenting the project''s results and the unique teachers'' toolkit on the application of the methods of contemporary art in school curricula and providing information about the continuation of the residency programme.
One of the main goals of this project was that all the activities reach far more interested persons than we planned in the beginning of this project. The interest from teachers was very intense because the implementation of the co-creating seminars for teachers faced the problem in Latvian school system changes – in the new program Skola2030, was not enough practical methods for teachers to include contemporary art examples and tasks in the classes. So our projects toolkit complemented the missing tasks. One of our main ideas was to build this project on real needs of Latvian audiences, based on our previous experience working in Latvian schools from 2019. This project also filled the missing part of contemporary visual art practices in regions, outside the capital city Riga. It is not only the professional contemporary art exhibitions is not accessible to people living outside Riga, but also the presence of artists, living and co-creating art projects with communities in regions, is something that is not happening in Latvian culture field. Latvian Center for Contemporary Art have organized socially inclusive art practices and contemporary art workshops in the latest years and we can confirm that inclusion works only when art professionals are ready to visit their audiences outside walls of museums and cultural institutions. All the activities in the project was free of charge and accessible to all. This project raised huge interest from culture and education field locally and internationally. Artists continue to collaborate with schools in our National project “Latvian School Bag”. The goals of this project have been presented in National level as good practice that implements the main ideas of UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) Meeting in 2024 and many others seminars in Latvia. The situation with similar possibilities for such large scale cross-disciplinary projects where both – educational and cultural fields are connected, in Latvia is still a challenge. The “Latvian School bag” programme is not having enough funding, and the municipalities in regions are not rich enough to initiate artists in residencies by themselves. The cultural field professionals and biggest municipalities (with culture projects section / departments) now understands the importance of such initiatives but the only possibility is to continue write international projects, because there are no national support programmes for such projects as ours. We are planning to continue collaboration with our project partners – artist collective Tenthaus in other projects, and we are continuing working with involved artists to develop new workshops in our exhibitions. We have written some projects to continue working with school children, now we are waiting for the responses. We continue to consult other art institutions and schools. Soms schools have shown initiative to write Erasmus+ projects to continue artists involvement in schools life. Overall we are very satisfied with all project results and numbers, but we still see that it is impossible to continue such changing and cross-disciplinary contemporary art initiatives in our country. But they are very, very needed.
Summary of bilateral results
Project has been realised in very close collaboration. The main collaboration included support system from Tenthaus artists to Latvian artists – each Norwegian artist chose 1 Latvian artist and were mentoring him/her 1:1 all the period of time when Latvian artist worked in schools. There were 6 mentoring sessions held online that each consisted of 2 parts – the first part was case study from Norway experience – how to make long-term art projects in schools. The second part was tasks, Q&A session, and support for our Latvian artists in their challenges in art residencies with children. All the mentoring sessions was recorded and are available in our projects vimeo account. Norwegian artists was present as workshop leaders in our activity – Contemporary art school. They worked in pairs with the Latvian artists and created art workshops together. Also, they were mentoring the result of the residencies – how the exhibition of newly created artworks to be built and organized. Latvian Center for Contemporary Art also visited Norway to see practically how project partners - Tenthaus work in Oslo. It was unique experience because it related also to our working method – to create art exhibition, and work horizontally as artist collective, not as art project or classical art institution. There are many possibilities to continue our institutional collaboration with Tenthaus – the collaboration was overall very inspiring not only to our artists, but also to them.Tenthaus shared their years-long experience and expanded their knowledge as geographical scope as well as experimenting with a new role in the project.The webpage of the project artistispresent.lv continues to be available as inspirational source for artists, teachers and culture practitioners.