Katarina Pavić: On Governance in Culture

Katarina Pavić, a cultural worker and activist from Zagreb, Croatia, talks about reshaping cultural organizations: What you do every day is a habit, and then your habits form your character, then your character informs the way you do things and the way you organize. When we talk about reshaping organizational systems — this is how we need to start. We need to start with what we are doing every day and how we are doing things every day and this is how we produce something that is called change or novelty.

How is this enough? Rethinking cultural management

This short paper is the result of the opportunity to join the conversations happening at the Reshape Forum in Lublin during the first week of April. It is also part of the wider research I am conducting in the framework of my PhD in Artistic Studies at the University of Coimbra on alternative models of organization and management in the performing arts. If you’re interested in continuing this conversation, do get in touch. The research is funded by FCT - SFRH/BD/136458/2018.

Fatin Farhat on cultural sector in the MENA region

Fatin Farhat, a Palestinian based cultural worker from Ramallah talks about art sector in Palestine and MENA region, as well as about RAWA, a bottom up funding initiative. Fatin is currently enrolled in the Cultural Policy program at Hildesheim University as a Ph.D., examining the potential of inviting new practices to grassroots cultural initiatives, while highlighting the potential role local governments can play in fostering community/citizen participation and cultural development in Palestine.

Oxana Timofeeva: What Lenin Teaches Us About Witchcraft

Oh I believe in miracles Oh I believe in a better world for me and you —The Ramones

Workshop in Tangier: Fair governance models

The first workshop in the Fair governance models trajectory will take place in Tangier, Morocco, 4-6 September 2019, and it will be organised and hosted by Goethe-Institut Barcelona in collaboration with Tabadoul and Atelier Kissaria.

State of the Arts? Working in the cultural sector in Romania

A conversation about the socio-economic conditions of cultural work and the policies and support structures for culture in Romania. We analyse the main challenges that artists and organisations face and explore the models and practices that enable their resilience.

What are the alternatives? Organising for a socially and ecologically sustainable world

"Ephemera: theory & politics in organization?" an independent journal, founded in 2001. brings in it's 18th issue an eclectic set of papers that each address a central question: how we can build capacity for living and organising in ways that align better with natural systems and imagine ecologically sustainable and socially just alternatives?

Do it Together. Practices and Tendencies of Participatory Governance in Culture in the Republic of Croatia

Participation does not imply only joining in the game but also the rules of the game, i.e., the conditions under which the game is played. Understanding these rules and the possibility of creating them make the key difference. Participation in this case becomes a tool for positive changes

Fair Governance Models Workshop in Sofia

The second workshop of the group Fair Governance Models will be held in Sofia from 4 to 6 December 2019 and will be organised by ACT Association.

Governing a culture of survival?

As a part of the trajectory group ‘Fair Governance Models’, we are working on a proposal that outlines a paradigm shift in the cultural field in order to force a change towards a fairer society. Edited by Sam Trotman, Martin Schick & Helga Baert

The Department of Civil Imagination (DCI) Agency in Athens: Amministrazione Trasparente or When DCI met GABRIELA

Within the framework of the European network RESHAPE, 3 137 artist-run space, with the support and in collaboration with Onassis AiR, sets the ground for a dialogue on cultural management and policy in the contemporary art sector in Greece.

Fair Governance: Where Are We Now, and Where Should We Be?

Fair governance is highly applicable subject of discussion within independent cultural organizations. It consists from set of values which, when applied to particular governing within a group, refer to how participants govern this group, what values they want to provide, but also open question self-governance, self-facilitation, the responsibility of each member. The group sets up different tools of fair governance. What is fairness and what does it mean not only in arts and culture, but also in a more global context of relations? How do we govern now, how can we govern in the future? Can fair governance exclude classical resources, such as funding?

Fair governance models: Remote Athens Workshop

How do we make open, inclusive and flexible governance models?

Igor Štiks: Activist aesthetics

Igor Štiks presented cases of activist aesthetics in the artistic acts, practices and works related to contemporary political and social activism of progressive and left-wing movements and groups in the post-Yugoslav region.

Athens Working Group: On Fairness, Collaboration and Work in Time of Crisis

Myrto Katsimicha in conversation with four practitioners working in the cultural field in Athens that participated in Reshape Remote Athens workshop in May 2020 at Onassis Air.

Culture in the state of crisis- a conversation with representatives of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation

Just like all around the world, the COVID-19 outbreak has shaken the cultural sector in Ukraine, a country that has been struggling with an unstable political situation for a while now. The rise of cultural life after the Dignity Revolution of 2014, was soon accompanied by the establishment of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation - the state institution that introduces new mechanisms of funding for initiatives in the field of culture and creative industries. Thanks to the UCF, the non-governmental sector was not left to fend for itself during the pandemic, as the foundation took on the role of a crisis manager, trying to adapt quickly to the new realities.

Reframing European Cultural Production: From Creative Industries towards Cultural Commons

Professor Pascal Gielen (Antwerp University) did research on the biotope around artistic careers, on the role of institutions, and how the transnational creative industries and the longing for a monotopic European identity put pressure on this biotope. Gielen formulates a number of suggestions on how a healthy artistic biotope may be maintained in the future, and how artists can offer us a more complex heterotopic understanding of Europe in a globalising world.

Feminist Practices, Radical Politics

Feminism seems to be gaining momentum in many countries, but most organisations and groups are still working on the basis of patriarchal standards. The ‘feminisation of politics’ includes different elements, which all aim to change the way activism and politics (in a broad sense) are done. A feminist way of organising includes considerations such as gender balance, building power through cooperation, collective leadership, democratic decision-making, care (for peers, for dependent beings and for oneself), intersectional understanding of issues, and non-violence.

Metod Fund: Reshape the institutions!

Based in Kiev, Method Fund was founded in 2015 by a diverse group of artists, curators, critics, architects and educators. Their founders — Lada Nakonechna, Olga Kubli, Tetiana Endshpil, Ivan Melnichuk, Denis Pankratov and Kateryna Badianova — describe it as an experimental self-educational project, focused on searching the form of an art institution that would meet the requirements of the present as well as the peculiarities of the local context. We’ve met via zoom with Lada on one screen and Olga, Ivan and Tetiana on the other, to talk about their views on institutional experimenting and reshaping.

On Fair Governance and Evaluation — An interview with Katarina Pavić

Katarina Pavić is a cultural worker and activist, who worked in the independent cultural scene in Croatia and the wider region of former Yugoslavia since 2005. Her work has combined advocacy and research at the intersection of civil society development, activism, and cultural critique. She has been the facilitator of the fair governance models trajectory of RESHAPE, which describes it as a ‘reflection-oriented process, where its focus – governance of artistic and cultural institutions and collectives – functions simultaneously as a form of critique and an open invitation to imagine and practice a different way of being-in-common’. In this conversation, she spoke from London where she pursued her MA in culture industry and to which she has just moved back.

Museums: Essential or Non-essential?

In a crisis of survival in the aftershock of the novel Covid-19 pandemic, everything that we have taken for granted is questioned: is it considered ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’? Museums are by no means a sacred institution any more than newspapers, educational systems, the music industry, the norms of governance and checks and balances in a democracy, the secular pillars of science, truth seeking and rational discourse, the preservation of the commons, public lands and spaces, good manners, common human decency and decorous behaviour, and so on. All these things hang in the balance right now along with our treasured museums. All of them turn out to be things we have to decide to fight for if we are to keep them, or that must be reinvented to find new relevancy and life.

Reimagine the Art World

About Fair governance models and trans-post-national artistic practices

Art and Culture after Covid-19

Everyone seems to agree that the Covid-19 pandemic has a huge impact on the economy, social relations, politics, and culture. We’re nowhere near through this crisis yet, and alternative futures are already being promoted, others wait to ‘get back to normal’, while most people are too busy coping with the emergency. In this ferment of events and contestation, it’s valuable to be reminded of the bigger picture. This essay by Professor Justin O’Connor (University of South Australia) places the current situation of cultural organisations and workers in a historical context, reminding us of their developing relationship with the political economy of recent decades. It is also challenging because it asks what compromises have been made by cultural actors in pursuit of recognition and at what costs.

From Freehouse to Neighborhood Co-op: The Birth of a New Organizational Form

About twenty plus years of urban development and artistic research efforts initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk in her native Rotterdam. The challenge of a neighbourhood culture that is organized through cooperative methods is to be exceedingly aware of how it changes and why. It must always be questioning what agendas are driving it forward and whether it is living up to its values.

Agencies of Art: A Report on the Situation of Small and Medium-sized Art Centres in Denmark, Norway and Sweden

How can one fathom the implications and values of smaller arts institutions within the greater art ecosystem? One key aspect is their ground-breaking approach to relations between art and society, education, and the formation of public spheres. Another is their important role in local communities whilst maintaining a constant dialogue within the international arts context. But how can we create dialogue around the values that are being built – beyond visitor numbers and media coverage? What cooperative processes can be adopted so that artists and culture, small and large institutions, municipalities, regions, states, and federal politics all cooperate to encourage art’s potential?

'The Gamified Workshop Toolkit' goes online on May the 6th!

'The Gamified Workshop Toolkit' is an online workshop about solidarity in collaboration developed in the framework of the RESHAPE project. During this workshop, we will test ‘The Gamified Workshop Toolkit’, which is a card game that is especially designed for teams from different cultures, backgrounds, or personal situations, who are just beginning their collaboration.

The RESHAPE project was presented for the first time offically to a wider audience in Bulgaria

An online conference organized by ACT Association (Bulgaria) took place on the 10th of June in Sofia. The multilingual event presented for the first time in detail the RESHAPE project to general Bulgarian audiences.

Summary of the Evaluation Report of RESHAPE

The Evaluation Report is prepared by Eduardo Bonito, Claire Malika Zerhouni, Isabel Ferreira, Katarina Pavić and Lívia Diniz with contribution of Lala Deheinzelin

Workshop 1: Art and citizenship

Workshop 1: Fair governance models

The first workshop in trajectory Fair governance models.

Workshop 2: Fair governance models

The second workshop in trajectory Fair governance models.

Fair governance models: Remote Athens Workshop

Onassis Air will host a 3-day workshop on "Fair Governance Models". Initially planned to take place in Athens, the workshop will bring together nine artists, researchers and practitioners in the cultural field, from across Europe and South Mediterranean, with a group of artists and art professionals based in Athens to reflect on the future of governance within the cultural field.