Blog

The best we can. Re-establishing priorities for arts professionals in times of crisis

Arts professionals think that their work is important for society. Nevertheless, when it comes to defining or formulating this value in concrete terms, most of them fail to do so. Far from being able to establish the relevance of what they do for the people they aim to serve, they often seem to be totally unaware of what is going on around them and little informed on contemporary issues that affect their communities. Cuts in budgets for Culture, shrinking teams and an absurd demand for “doing more with less” have further intensified the disconnect between cultural organisations and society. The uncritical execution of repetitive tasks, therefore, has become a comfortable norm, where there seems to be little place for critical thinking, imagination, creativity and, ultimately, happiness. Can there be a way out from this swamp?

Blog

What Does ‘Reshaping’ Really Mean?

Personal reflections after the RESHAPE Forum, Lublin (1–3 april)

Audio

Podcast form Lublin Forum // Introduction into RESHAPE: Imagining alternatives

If you missed the RESHAPE Forum in Lublin at the beginning of April 2019, here's a chance to hear what we talked about.

Video

Silvia Bottiroli — Reshape Advisor

Silvia Bottiroli, a researcher and curator based in Amsterdam and a member of RESHAPE Advisory Board talks about RESHAPE project.

Audio

Audio Podcast form Lublin Forum // What Is To Be Reshaped, panel discussion

Toni Cots, Igor Stokfiszewski and Amahl Khouri in conversation with Barbara Van Lindt about perspectives of artist, art workers and policy makers in Europe and South Mediterranean.

Audio

Solidarity Funding: Western European Dominance

Solidarity is a complex construct which can have many different perspectives due to individual belief, social, ethnic and cultural background. When it comes to solidarity in funding, it is mostly Euro-centric interpretation of the financing which refers mostly exclusively to Western and Northern Europe. The group extracted six prototypes of solidarity funding: solidarity manifesto, game, solidarity tax on Creative Europe funding which would be directed to the non-eligible states, social network based on solidarity and b'n'b platform opened for non-artist which would serve as basis for mobility fund.

Video

Allae Hamioui on different kind of exchange economy.

Allae Hamioui from Moqrisset, a small village near Chefchaouen in Morocco talks about Djebli Club - a place that operates with a different kind of exchange economy.

Video

Abdou Benattabou: Mutual support of small organizations

Abdou Benattabou is a part of Zankar 90, an association based in Tangier that works with small projects that need help in administration and logistics to begin their own projects.

Video

Đorđe Balmazović: Pits and Falls of Group Work // Marcell Mars: Memory of the World / Public Library

A joint lecture by Đorđe Balmazović and Marcel Mars held on 14/11/2019 during the Reshape Intensive in Cluj.

Video

Gergana Dimitrova - On the Importance of the Independent Creative Sector for the City

Gergana Dimitrova talks about her work with the organisation 36 Monkeys, about the Sofia Municipal Strategy for Independent Creative Sector and the state of the independent scene in Sofia.

Video

Vesselin Dimov: On Making Space for Independent Art Scene in Sofia

Vesselin Dimov from ACT Association talks about their collaboration with the Municipality of Sofia in order to secure the performing and working space for the independent cultural scene in Sofia.

News

Fair governance models: Remote Athens Workshop

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

Longread

The Fairy Purse

Copyleft (Grants use rights, forbids proprietization): Reshape Network Trajectory Fair Governance Models and Christophe Joerin (TRNSTN) Edited by Martin Schick

Method

Changing the Game: The RESHAPE Transition

This text is a first attempt to join the dots between the proposals, to draft the initial contours of a framework for understanding them. To understand the proposals, it can be useful to first have a brief look at the origins and the promise of RESHAPE, and how the project itself was redesigned and reshaped during an intensive process within the RESHAPE community. Secondly, we begin a reflection on how these proposals might contribute to responding to the current needs within the arts field. In very different ways, these proposals respond to increasing pressures concerning how the arts are organized, governed, and supported (or not).

News

Online workshop: more than fifty people had joined ‘The Gamified Workshop Toolkit’

Flanders Arts Institute, Ettijahat - Independent Culture and Pogon - Zagrebački centar za nezavisnu kulturu i mlade organized an online session of testing ‘The Gamified Workshop Toolkit: Values of Solidarity’ prototype. The prototype was developed by Anikó Rácz, Doreen Toutikian, and Dorota Ogrodzka, within the frame of the Solidarity Economies trajectory group. It was especially designed for teams that are just beginning their collaboration, primarily in the field of arts and culture, but also in other relevant sectors.

News

'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.

Audio

Actions of Reshaping: An Overview of RESHAPE Conference Programme

Ivana Pejić spoke with the participants of the final RESHAPE conference, their prototypes and puting them in to practice.

Lecture

Maja Kuzmanović: The Art of Futuring. Unknown, unknowable & uncertain

The complex uncertainties of our times make engaging with futures increasingly challenging. What could encourage proactive engagement with these challenges?

Lecture

Introduction into RESHAPE: Imagining alternatives

Joris Janssens (Flanders Arts Institute) and Milica Ilić (Onda) introduce the what, the why and the how of the project.

Discussion

Cancelled // Clubture Network: Cultural Decentralisation Through Collaboration

Clubture Network is a non-profit, inclusive, participatory network of organizations working on strengthening the independent cultural sector through program networking, raising public visibility, encouraging organizational development of the sector and strengthening its influence on the institutional framework in which it operates.

Workshop

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.

Workshop

Value of art in social fabric: Remote Lisbon Workshop

The remote work within the RESHAPE group continues, this time in remote Lisbon. The group Value of Art in Social Fabric will work from 26 to 29 May on shaping their prototypes that will offer new approaches to this topic. They will work collectively on identifying their narrative on “reshaping the value of art in the social fabric”, in order to propose concrete, sustainable and realistic solutions for the art sector.

Discussion

Rounding up prototypes and getting ready to implement our innovative ideas

After 15 workshops where Reshapers, Facilitators and Partners were discussing the possibilities for reshaping the art field, the time came to step back a bit and to formulate those discussions into more elaborate reshaping prototypes that can be used across the sector.