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Description
The main aim of the project is to realize a set of activities leading to strengthening capacities of cultural players involved and improving access to contemporary art to new audiences.
The partial goals of the project are:
-To develop an innovative, high-quality contemporary art event, that will put the local inhabitants into the center of attention and launch it in Slovakia
-To foster the capacity of leader and partner organizations
-To support the artists, organizations, and their networking from Slovakia and partner countries
-To develop a strategy for sustainable cooperation with local communities from the disadvantaged geographical area
-To develop new (local, interregional, and international) audiences for the leader and partner organizations
-To use the artistic expressions to reflect on important social and environmental topics in a positive way of approach
-To use beauty as a tool against negative features in society - extremism, racism, suppression of freedom, xenophobia, hate speech, and discrimination
-To promote positive values in society - freedom of expression, openness, equality
-To follow the idea of minimizing the anti-environmental effect of the project
-To develop cooperation with pupils and students
Activities planned in this project should lead to a successful implementation of the festival in Slovakia. They also allow partners from Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway to benefit from the partnership in the project in different respective ways. Each partner involved in the project has its special role and tasks according to their experience and expertise. Aside from respective tasks, all partners share several partial tasks in the project. Partnership with all three partners was built after bilateral initiatives realized in August 2019. The purpose is to build a strong team of professionals who will contribute to successful project implementation and fulfillment of the aims and goals of the proposed application.
Summary of project results
Resurrection of a Miracle project aimed at developing audiences, supporting the creation and presentation of contemporary art and building partnerships at the local, national and international levels. The aim of the project promoter and the three partner organizations from donor countries was to promote values such as creativity, artistic freedom and regional, international and intercultural cooperation. At the same time, the project had the ambition to draw attention to current burning social or environmental topics through art.The project contained a series of activities leading to the implementation of a unique international site-specific art festival, which was placed outside of traditional cultural infrastructure – at countryside and on hiking trails.
Project consisted of 8 activities, and it was a cooperation of 4 cultural organisations. An important part of the project organised in the beginning of the project was a big Kick-off Meeting of partners of the project, which happened in July 2021. The meeting set the basis for the future activities, especially for the planned site specific festival. Another important event that was organised in April 2022 was the international conference Trends in Creative Work with Audience, which focused on the current trends in audience development in participating countries – Slovakia, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway. As part of the project, the Pôtoň Theatre and Cultural Center offered to Slovak and foreign artists a special program of artist residencies, the output of which was the creation of new site-specific works, inspired by the local environment. Apart from working on the artworks, artists also engaged with the local community – they led workshops for local people and organised public work-in-progress presentations of their artworks. The works of art created during the residencies were unconventionally placed on the hiking trails as part of the future festival Into the Miracles – thus creating a unique route to contemporary art. The festival happened from 1st July until 4th July 2023. It was an exceptional 4-day long event that featured 71 professional artists and 24 students of art, coming from countries: Slovakia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Altogether 82 artist interventions were placed on a 80-kilometer long tourist route that connected the villages of Dudince – Hontianske Tesáre – Sebechleby – Beluj – Baďan – Jabloňovce – Pečenice – Bátovce. Participants of the festival (called Pilgrims or Walkers) became pedestrians who walked dozens of kilometres for a unique experience. In October and November 2023, the outputs of the project were presented together with the documentary material in all the partner countries – in Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The project´s last activity – the closing conference – happened on 25th November 2023 in Batovce, Slovakia.
The Kick-off Meeting of partners took place between 25th July 2021 and 1st August 2021. It was attended by artists and cultural operators from Slovakia, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland and it focused mostly on strategic planning and organization of the future festival. An online international conference focused on good practices from innovative cultural or artistic projects and a discussion on topics related to working with the audience in critical times was held. The program of artist residencies ran from July 2021 to June 2023. The goal of the residencies was to create new artworks and productions specifically for the Into the Miracles festival. Artist residencies allowed artists to develop a deeper understanding of their host environment and created opportunities for local people to understand and interact with artists from different backgrounds or nationalities. Within this project, we organised 19 artist residencies. To encourage interaction and exchange between artists and local residents, 11 workshops were organised for the local community and 9 public work in progress presentations of the artworks created for the festival. Within the scope of this project and with the support of EEAGrants, 32 works of art and productions were created for the festival Into the Miracles. In total, 71 professional artists and 24 students of art created artworks for the festival. One of the performative productions created for the site-specific festival was a Norwegian-Slovak theatre co-production called The Call from the Terrace, that premiered as the opening performance of the festival Into the Miracles. Into the Miracles Festival was an international multi-genre site-specific festival that took place from July 1st till July 4th , 2023. It was an exceptional 4-day long event that featured in total 82 artist interventions on a 80-kilometer long tourist route that connected the villages of Dudince – Hontianske Tesáre – Sebechleby – Beluj – Baďan – Jabloňovce – Pečenice – Bátovce. The activity "Essence of Miracle" consisted of 3 project presentations in partner countries and 1 closing conference in Batovce, Slovakia. The aim of these events was be to inspite artists and cultural workers in all participating countries to develop similar projects. Outcomes and results were presented, as well as a documentary material from the festival – film and photos.
Summary of bilateral results
All partners brought their own know how and good practice to the project. All partners helped to create the main skeleton of a new model of art festival, they nominated speakers for the International Conference, nominated artists from their countries who created works of art for the Into the Miracles festival. They helped to promote the project and they coorganised public presentations of the project in their countries. There were artistic exchanges between artists and cultural operators from 4 participating countries. Formal and informal relationships were built between artists and cultural operators. We were able to bring artists from donor countries to Slovak countryside and people and on the other hand we were able to present and outstanding results of the project to the audiences from donor countries.