Description
Despite the efforts of many countries to control the migration of inhabitants to urban regions, the rural areas are losing work power,the youth leaves,the social,economical and cultural participation of those who stay are limited and services become useless, while nature resources are depleted. The project objective is to create discussion and generate new models for artist residencies in rural regions where the residencies would play an important role in the regeneration and improvement of life quality in the regions. By building on the existing experience, involving internationally acknowledged artists and experts from other fields, creating discussion and exchange of ideas (seminar), testing the results (guest performance), the project leader and partners will introduce concrete collaboration measures (residencies and presentation of the residency creations).The project activities are all related to the performing arts field and all the participants are dance and theatre professionals from Latvia and Project Partners Fé & Fjörvi (Icland) and Dansearena Nord (Norway).The project objectives–to enhance the collaboration between Latvia and donor countries,to support mobility of artists,cultural operators and artworks–will be reached through the project activities which include the guest performance of Norwegian artist Heine Avdal at the 11th International Festival of Contemporary Theatre Homo Novus in Riga and artist residencies and culture in Latvian regions where they will collaborate with Latvian artists to create a new artistic project directly linked to local context and involving local communities.The seminar “Aesthetics and Power”in Hammerfest during the Nordic-Baltic dance platform kedja Encounter will also strongly contribute to the cultural exchange. The project activities include a seminar, guest performance and creation and presentation of two new dance works in Latvian regions.
Summary of project results
The project objective was to create discussion and generate new models for artist residencies in rural regions where the residencies would play an important role in the regeneration and improvement of life quality in the regions. On the existing experience, involving internationally acknowledged artists and experts from other fields, creating discussion and exchange of ideas (seminar), testing the results (guest performances), the project leader and partners introduced concrete collaboration measures (residencies and presentation of the residency creations).The project activities were related to the performing arts field. The dance and theatre professionals from Latvia and Project Partners Fé & Fjörvi (Icland) and Dansearena Nord (Norway) were involved in the implementation of the project. The project objective–to enhance the collaboration between Latvia and donor countries, to support mobility of artists, cultural operators and artworks was reached - Norwegian choreographer and Fieldworks production “Distant Voices” participated in International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus”, performance – installation “Carry on” in Rucka, Latvia was organized with participation of the artists from Norway, Belgium, Latvia and Japan, performance-walk “Last Supper” with participation Iceland and Latvian artists was organized in Cīrava, Latvia and the lecture and discussion dedicated to the dance community development, with practical steps and solutions “A Step Forward. Dance Community Development Examples in Iceland and Latvia” were organized in Latvia. The project’s events were new opportunity for local artists and audience to see new and creative cultural performances. Events were attended by approximately 450 visitors.
Summary of bilateral results
The project partners participated in the planning of project activities and that helped to achieve high quality in the project's performances and seminar and lecture. The project was a vulnerable opportunity to promote tolerance and dialogue among different national and social groups, first of all, it created meetings between artists from Latvia, Iceland and Norway, secondly, it introduced a new part of the society with different notion of arts production and presentation where creativity of each individual was valued, and thirdly, it offered a different type of communication between arts and spectator and contributed to understanding of the role of artistic processes and its necessity in life of each individual. Each of partners committed to the project's activities as well as was good representatives for the overall idea of the project and the cooperation as a whole. Project helped to strengthening the partnership of the involved organizations. The close collaboration helped to achieve the best results in the project.