Guest post: "Where there is a will, there will be a well", by Sunil Vishnu (Índia)

Sunil Vishnu is the young man who went after his dream: to make theatre. Together with a friend from university he founded EVAM in 2003 in the city of Chennai, India. As an independent arts organization, EVAM is facing a number of challenges in order to survive, to grow and to maintain the quality of its work. What does this mean exactly for a theatre company in India, where governement funding is extremely low, arts philanthropy almost inexistent and there´s a general lack of interest in the arts? Well, Sunil was surprised to find out that there was a ‘well’ of interest, care and money right there for EVAM. He shares this experience and his learnings with us. mv

The EVAM team

As I started writing this piece and looked for a title I thought this inspired by original proverb line would be perfect because, for me, it describes the state of art makers today in the world. The proverb talks about the human will – the only thing which keeps an artist going, despite all the challenges he faces - and the ‘well’ – the means which enable him to create art and share it with the audience, that is funding and resources. Over the years, the will has remained the same, but the wells have eventually dried up. The latest solution is not to dig deeper in the well or find new ones, but to go to every other person in the village who has water and ask them to share it with you, in return for sharing the ownership of the dream with him. This is what the world calls crowdfunding and it’s in this context that I write this article.

So how do the independent artists and arts organizations survive and grow? Let’s look at my organization, EVAM. EVAM is a thriving arts organization with the mission of making a positive impact in the lives of people using the medium of theatre through live performances, managing artistic events and art education. As we turn 10 this year and have successfully evaded the threat of being closed down, I look at the various sources of funding we have had over the years. We started by investing our own money (2 Lakhs – 3000 USD) back in 2003. Six months later, we got our first sponsor (a private bank HSBC) and thought of adopting the advertising-driven model, where brands would look at EVAM as a means to reach out to their potential customers. Ticketing revenue and sponsorship sustained us until 2004. That year we decided to perform shows for other organizations at a given fee and also co-launched the Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Fest, the managing of live art events/fests becoming the next revenue generator. By 2009 we were into education, doing workshops and adding another source of income. All this without approaching the government - their support for the arts being weak, anyway. This was an option. Call it ego, self-esteem or fool hardiness, we wanted to make it on our own terms, never compromising the artistic output.

Then, we realized.our dreams were getting bigger, but the well was becoming dry. We  looked for different wells, but other fellow artists doing the same. It was around that time that I started my arts management fellowship at the Kennedy Center in Washington. The first big learning was arts philanthropy. India didn’t have a culture or appetite for it. There is a general apathy towards the arts and the educational system itself dubs the arts among the least preferred subjects. Nevertheless, I knew we had a ‘family’ of audiences and important people in the society who would want to contribute financially and to be part of our organization’s journey, not as a full-time investor or sponsor, but more like a ‘special appearance’ actor in a film.

That’s when the learning from the fellowship (dream big - concentrate on great art - share the dream with your family - make them part of it) came to the forefront: my family members could not sponsor a show of mine, but they could give some money as individuals for a specific project if they believed in it. It was at that time, in 2012, that an NGO called Nalandaway launched a new online crowdfunding portal, Orange Street, which offered artists a platform to put up projects related to a cause and seek funding. Initially, I was sceptical about it. Why would an audience member, who currently spends  1000 Rupees (16 USD) a year to watch my plays, give me money to create something if they could give directly to the cause? But we went ahead and made a video explaining what we were doing and why we were seeking funds. Our project was the creation of a play, Shekinah Jacob’s The long way home, which we would perform across India, spreading awareness about child trafficking.

We needed 5 lakhs (8000 USD) to do the project. Within hours from putting it up on the platform, someone invested  5000 Rupees (80 USD) and we were awestruck. Within one day we got 7500 Rupees (120 USD) from people we didn´t even know! At the same time, we started an internal campaign: we started calling, sending e-mails or texting all our stakeholders, people we knew, audience members; we also put an ad on Facebook, Twitter and our website. Slowly and steadily contributions increased, this was actually possible!

But the time came when we had made every possible contact and the well seemed to be drying once again. My staff was busy creating this show and doing many other things and had no more time to run this campaign. The momentum dipped and we thought “OK, maybe this is all we can do”. 

That’s when a music band,  Jersey Rhythms, called us from New Jersey and said: “Hey, we want to contribute, we´ll do a charity show for you!”.  We were stupefied! A group from Jersey who we didn’t know us, was actually following our campaign in India and wanted to contribute! Suddenly, my organization realized that this movement was bigger than just the 9 of us in this office. We picked up once again and made sure this fundraising campaign became part of our daily rigour: we had a bell in the office ringing every time a new donation would come in. In the following 2 months Jersey Rhythms raised more than 75000 Rupees (1200 USD). The long way home was created and performed across India, managing to raise awareness regarding the cause it aimed to support.

We had found a new source of energy, enthusiasm and funds. Our family (namely the audience, partnering organizations, individuals who care for us, sponsors, etc.) was willing to invest in our projects in their own small way, if we were open to sharing our dream with them. A year later, in 2013 and once again through crowdfunding, we were able to send 150 underprivileged children to a summer arts camp. Our aim for 2014 is to launch a crowdfunded film and play which will be purely ‘art for art’s sake and not art for a cause’. This will be a true trust of the theory that maybe crowdfunding is the first big step in the direction of arts philanthropy in India.

In the meanwhile, here are a few of my learnings on this journey:

If you want to create projects based on crowdfunding

a) Create a genuine project – put it on a genuine site, don’t phaff! (people can see right through a fake project);

b) Create a strong ASK – what’s the project, who does it impact and how, why are you doing it and where are funds going to be utilized, and hence why should anyone donate for the project;

c) Always have a limited time frame for the fundraising – depending on the size of the amount to be raised (3 months to 1 year); also, be specific about what you´re asking (egg. “Please invest 500 Ruppess for the project by 15^th Jan 2013”);

d) Don’t make this the only source of funding for your project;

e) Use the equity of the platform (the site) to generate more awareness;

f) Note down the names of people who invest and follow up with them, thanking them. Make them part of the project in the way they prefer to (could be as simple as sending e-mail updates to as much as coming and doing backstage for free!);

g) Don’t be ashamed to ask for money – you are asking people to share your dream, it´s an investment they are making; actually they are as good as co-producers of the project;

h) People have a need to feel ‘connected’ and ‘counted’ – make sure you give the people both through this relationship;

i) Create a communications plan and rope in various key game-changers who can endorse your project; celebrities are welcome…;

j) Internally, keep your team motivated, give them incentives to run; reward them, acknowledge them – it’s quite a thankless job otherwise!

People will contribute when:

a) They love you as a person and want to be part of your journey;

b) They love your organization and its mission;

c) They believe in the impact your project will create on people;

d) They can’t do what you do – hence they want to live your life vicariously!

As I said earlier, where there is a will, there is a well.  Go and keep digging wells, but don’t forget the rivers and streams and ponds and seas which are the people around us. Invite your family to be part of your journey, you will be surprised with the love and trust they will shower on you!

Sunil Vishnu K is co-founder, CEO and artistic director of  EVAM, an award-winning theatre entrepreneurship. Founded in 2003 by Sunil and Karthik Kumar, EVAM is today a 10-year-young thriving arts business which performs plays, manages live art events and works in arts education. Sunil receveid the Performing Arts Entrepreneur Award from the British Council in 2010 and completed the Summer Arts Management Fellowship at Devos Institute of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2013.

Guest post: "Art under siege", by Chaymaa Ramzy El Dessouky (Egypt)

There is a special type of Alexandrian woman: one that is determined, opinionated, confident, full of energy, ideas and dreams and has got an amazing working capacity. Chaymaa Ramzy is that type of Alexandrian. Given all these characteristics, she´s not a person who will step back when encountering difficulties or facing controversy. Among the various projects she´s involved in, one that has really captured her heart is Marsam 301, a project based in Bethlehem, Palestine, involving people from various arab countries and one whose headquarters she´s not able to set her eyes on. For the time being... mv

Street events (Photo: Marsam 301)

“I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.”

― Edward W. Said, Palestine

How do we define ‘siege’? Is it a physical siege, or rather a psychological one? Are we able as simple people to overcome its boundaries? Is a siege a boundary? Or it is just a limitation to some lands and spaces that we should continuously dream to fly high over?

Questions that may have different answers, which each one of us can interpret according to his or her own situation, place or style of living.

Palestine: The people, the territory, the country and the Holy Land. The experience that everyone is looking forward to. Some of us can and many can’t. One can dream of the beauty of its alleys, the kindness of its people and enjoy the non-ending stories of its houses and streets.

When Monther Jawabreh, a prominent visual artist from Bethlehem, first started thinking about founding a new cultural space, “Marsam 301” (Studio 301), he did not think about promoting art in its traditional spaces, but in different ones, where one can be touched by a story, listen to a local dialect, hear life loudly in spaces like houses, schools, hospitals and maybe prisons.

Marsam 301 is an independent cultural space, located in the city of Bethlehem, Palestine. A place that stresses the empowerment of the Palestinian visual artist and the promotion of the Palestinian visual art in the Arab region and probably in the world! A vision shared with other artists, cultural managers and supporters from Palestine and other neighbour Arab countries.

The name “301” derives from the checkpoint Kabr Rahil (Rahil’s Tomb), which is located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. An Israeli checkpoint known as ‘Barrier 300’ (Stand/Stop for inspection) prevents the crossing of the Palestinians to and from Jerusalem.  Marsam 301 is 2 kilometers away from the checkpoint, right in the center of the city of Bethlehem. So Marsam 301 took this name in order to be the second barrier that will force the Palestinians to Stand/ Stop to see art. 301 is also the number of the building.

Marsam 301, the space (Photo: Marsam 301)

“Raiding houses, kidnapping people, bombing cafés” might sound dangerous! But when you hear it from the Marsam 301 team you understand their mission and eagerness to raid houses with Art, to kidnap people and keep them long in art galleries and to bomb all the cafés of the alley with colors. A vision that is derived from their social surrounding and their daily dialect, to transform the current social and political siege into a sense of happiness and appreciation of the arts.  A vision that would liberate minds and would raise awareness about a true relationship that should exist between the artist and his community.

Marsam 301´s three main programmes include at this stage the promotion of the Palestinian visual art and the capacity building of young Palestinian artists. Another important programme aims to bring arts to the streets and to the non-traditional spaces, even to create art in its non- traditional forms. Finally, an artistic residency hosts other artists who are willing to live the Palestinian art exchange experience, whether from the Arab region or from any part of the world.

Through these three programmes, Marsam 301 team wishes to play an important role in the Palestinian art scene by linking a large number of young emerging artists with other prominent and well based ones. Also, to build a new relationship between these two types of artists that might benefit at this stage from sharing experiences and debating certain topics. An idea that has been confirmed and appreciated by Tamam Al Akhal, a prominent Palestinian visual artist, during the team´s last meeting in Amman, Jordan. Al Akhal strongly shares Marsam 301´s vision and goals.

The team met recently in Amman, Jordan. (Photo: Marsam 301)

This extraordinary experience which, in my opinion (being proudly one of its founders, together with Iman Bachir from Lebanon and Ahed Izhiman from Palestine), will contribute to the Palestinian art scene greatly, with a rich impact on the people and the community. It will allow for access to the arts at any place and at any time. By providing an insight into the arts that reflect the reality of the country and expressing people’s views, opinions and emotions to the outer. An experience that places the artists in the heart of the society.

Marsam 301 will continue with its strategy to help develop the Palestinian community, hoping that, one day, people will draw their own freedom and will never stand or feel under siege!

To contact Marsam 301 please write to marsam301(at)gmail.com or visit us on Facebook.

Chaymaa Ramzy El Dessouky is the Program Officer at the Anna Lindh Foundation (ALF) in Alexandria, Egypt; an International Fellow of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Washington DC; founding member of Marsam 301 in Bethlehem, Palestine. Born in Alexandria, she graduated from the Faculty of Commerce - Alexandria University with a Bachelor degree in Business Administration and Strategic Marketing. With her experience as a trainer, she provides strategic support to civil society organizations and emerging bodies in the Arab region, helping them to create strategies that enhance their capacity in marketing, advertising and strategic planning. She brings people together using her networking skills and wide circle of contacts within the Euromed region. Through her fellowship at the Kennedy Center, she wishes to focus on developing a marketing plan that will help engage the press and incorporate social media platforms to empower local events in Egypt. Chaymaa organizes the Alexandria ‘s Annual Intercultural Festival “Farah El Bahr” with the Anna Lindh Foundation. She is also involved in creating the strategic plan for Marsam 301 in Bethlehem, Palestine, being part of a regional team of people from different Arab countries.

Contacts:
Chaymaa.ramzy(at)gmail.com
Chaymaa.ramzy(at)bibalex.org

Guest post: "Cultural Chile or the attempt for decentralized management models", by Eduardo Duarte Yañez (Chile)

Eduardo Duarte Yañez is a chilean cultural manager. In this post, he shares with us his concerns regarding what he calls his government's obsession with the impact of culture – a concept which he thinks has been very little or even not defined at all by those using it. At the same time, he places his trust on local communities which, together with international cultural cooperation and local political authorities, are building management models aiming to blaze a trail for actually making cultural programmes happen. mv

Opening of the First International Meeting  Mujeres por la Cultura, that took place last week in Chile.

To talk about cultural processes in Chile, from the perspective of registering city management models, where the role of culture, although not that of a protagonist, is of vital importance in public policies of local development, is not something very exciting for cultural managers, artists and community cultural movements, the organized civil society.

There is, of course, an approved national cultural policy up to 2016, where we are offered a series of mainstream concepts, where the value of Intangible Cultural Heritage is mentioned for the first time, a number of measures and lines not associated, almost transversally, to a management plan that will take them forward.

Moving beyond this landscape, we’ll try to focus, in a general way, on the local realities of the different communities. In the last four years, there was no advancement with any concept or criterion that would help us understand what the Culture Ministry of Chile (without a ministerial classification, yet another contradiction) means by “impact” and its obession with it. What’s the impact of a poem or a musical composition? The number of people who read or listen to it? The quality of reading or hearing? And what’s the deadline for measurig it? How many decades for Gabriela Mistral’s work having an “impact” on national culture, if it’s actually having one...? How to quantify the “impact” of a painting? By the number of eyes that viewed it in a specific period of time (months, years?) or by its value in the art market? I am afraid that the legitimate concern regarding the results of a certain public policy (in this case, a cultural public policy) obsessed with “impact”, if one is not careful, might end up in a dead-end.

On the other hand, also the debate regarding gratuity or not for cultural activities (access to culture) is taking place in a marginal way, and not as a debate among citizens. Most of the cultural offer is free, and in many cases it is mixed and confused with entertainment shows for the masses, which can cost as much as the annual budget of the Municipal Department for Culture.

There are 345 municipalities in Chile. According to the second national survey on culture (carried out by the National Councilfor Culture and the Arts), the artistic form that draws the largest number of chilean audiences is cinema (34%), followed by concerts (29,3%). This situation prompts an interesting debate regarding the cinematographic contents, where traditional cinemas were substituted by rooms in big shopping malls, and where the programming is based on Hollywood’s cinematographic industry, in which “choosing” the film to see actually means “choosing among the films I oblige you to see”, there is no variety in content where there can also take place independent cinema festivals or cinema events in public and private universities.

The promotion of reading is another chapter, even longer, of ambiguities. Chile has got 19% tax on books, something that drains publishing houses, emerging authors and authors in general, and mainly the common citizen, who’s not able to buy books which, quite often, equal a 20% or 30% of a monthly salary, with which one must sustain his/her family. A worker cannot buy books with quality contents, it’s become prohibitive.

Contrary to everything that has been said so far, local communities, as is the case of Coquimbo, together with international cultural cooperation and local political authorities, are designing cultural management models as flexible tools built together with all local cultural agents, in order to be able to draw a navigation route which will result in the delivering of cultural programmes, sustainable and with a larger number of indicators, through the registration of every action. There have been projects such as the Sociocultural Mapping of Popular Neighborhoods of Coquimbo and School Ethnography, following the successful models of Heritage Education of Brazil and Colombia. In 2012, with funding from the municipal budget for culture, there was the starting of the Seminars and Debates of the Microneighborhoods experience, in order to include, following a disciplined and scientific way in the gathering of data and also with multiple formats for aquiring those indicators, without being necessarily academic, issues that arealso important to take into consideration.

In this way, the municipalities are creating a world visualization of their principlal biocultural assets and they move forward with experimenting city cultural management models, in an inclusive way that involves the community. It’s a large task and it has, for sure, many ups and downs, nevertheless, the most important thing in the cultural process of the Coquimbo region – from which originated the first woman to win a Nobel prize, Gabriela Mistral – is that there is an inter-relation between its cities and the wish of all manages, artists and political authorities to work together in an articulated way. We hope to have by the end of 2013 the first register of this process, which is being adapted and receives many impulses on behalf of the local community.

Eduardo Duarte Yañez is a writer and cultural manager, creator of various cultural projects and programmes for local development or cultural integration. In 2006 he received a national award for Municipal Cultural Management in Chile. He has a degree in Cultural Management from teh Arts Faculty of the University of Chile; he has a postgraduate degree in International Cooperation and Cultural Management from the University of Barcelona, Spain. He publishes in various media in Latin America and Spain.

Guest post: "From 'Museo' to 'Useo'", by Jorge Barco (Colombia)

Medellín is Colombia´s second largest city. For some, it´s still synonymous of the drug cartel. For others, it´s the example of a city which, through cultural and social policies, managed to lower its criminality rate and show its inhabitants new paths for their development, as individuals and as a community. Recently, I read an interview by Jorge Barco, Director of the Education and Culture Department at the Modern Art Museum of Medellín. I was very pleased when he accepted to write for Musing on Culture and to share his thoughts on the role cultural institutions, and museums in particular, may have in the development of a new relationship between creation, heritage and life in community. mv

Colectivo Impar (Photo: Andres Sampedro)

“La estabilidad que estamos construyendo ahora es afectivopráctico y no material, un inmenso laboratorio de la imaginación, aprovechando de toda grieta que se puede encontrar para dar cuerpo a lo que sentimos dentro” Las Grietas

Maria Vlachou´s invitation to write for her blog, as well as ICOM´s invitation to participate in its next conference in Rio de Janeiro, is an opportunity for me to start organizing some ideas which have motivated big part of my thinking as manager, educator and activist in the museums of the Antioquia region (Colombia) in the last seven years. 

Today, it makes sense to think about the role cultural institutions – museums in particular – may have as places where one may redefine a new relationship with creation, heritage and life in community. Museums – in a role that is definitely becoming close to that of ‘cultural centres’, in the case of Medellín – have an important role in the promotion of educational, cultural, and exhibition programmes, which go beyond the walls of the institution and reach slums and distant settlements; while in their interior, they continuously reinvent the forms of relating to their visitors through expanded education (Edupunk), the new focuses of cultural management and networking.

On its part, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) – located in the last four years at an old iron foundry workshop – has been consolidated as a strategic place in the country, for its exhibitions, but, mostly, for its educational and cultural programmes. It´s the appropriate place to ask the following questions:

What are the guidelines for this work? What are the elements in order to start creating a new institutionality and definition of what we historically call a ‘Museum’?

Looking for answers for these questions makes me suggest the construction of trust as one of the guiding principles: a fine, persevering and delicate work of texture and community involvement, which is being developed together with collaborative projects and by working in network, which may be registered in the mapping of a more and more expanded cultural scene. The LABSURLAB project is just one example of how an initiative which originated in MAMM was converted into an international network of activists who work around the notions of art, science, technology and communities with a biopolitical focus.

LABSURAB (Photo: Checho)

Through the mapping of the projects being developed on the ground, we are creating relationships between the cultural agents of the city, the region, the continent and the world, trying to bind social, identity and professional groups, as well as institutions, universities, enterprises, projects and communities, for the mobilization of ideas. The mapping of cultural projects is a fundamental instrument in the processes of contemporary cultural creation.

Another line of action is directed to the exploration of new definitions of what we normally call ‘cultural management’, aiming to attribute to it its whole creative power, through open models which allow to reinvent the relations of creation, circulation and appropriation; recognizing that – just like it happens in the case of artistic practices – in cultural projects a big part of the work is based in the same management. Inevitably, this situation makes us also rethink the roles and relationships – between those who create, those who receive, those who educate, those who exhibit and those who manage –, while there is, at the same time, a transformation of the disciplinary fields.

There is one more element which links our work as cultural activists to the technologies, apart from the mere technical aspects: the tools offered to us by this movement involve new formats for collaborative creation, education, management of projects, activism, reorganization of the work and the production of common goods. The cultural and artistic processes related to digital culture are today territories of limits, fronteers and exchange and the museum is a strategic place, from which one can activate these processes.   

An additional guiding line has been taking us towards the generation of creative dialogues between the museum and the independent movements and initiatives, from artistic residencies to music circuits and bars, to non conventional spaces of non formal education, with the objective to carry out projects from cooperation and mutualism.  The purpose has been to generate environements of dialogue, co-creation and opportunities for both spheres (institutions and movements).

MAMM Education and Culture team (Photo: Clara Botero)

From this perspective, the function of the museum is global and, at the same time, local, offering a place of encounter between multiple layers and occupations of contemporary creation, making possible the development of sujbectivities. A place of encounter, work, production and research, apart from a place for exhibiting and promoting, where all elements mix and feed and from which a new institutionality and space may emerge, which I propose to provisionally call ‘Useo’.

Jorge Bejarano Barco works in the museum sector of the Antioquia region (Colombia) since 2007. He is the Director of tghe Department of Education and Culture of the Museu de Arte Moderno de Medellín. In the past, he worked in the Museo de Antioquia, in the Museums Network and in the Municipal and Departmental Councils of Culture. He participated in the creation of independent projects and networks which brought together the arts, sciences, technologies and communities (see here and here and here). He was invited to lecture at the Cátedra Medellín-Barcelona, the Encuentro Internacional los Museos en la Educación organizaed by the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid, at the Master en Gestión Cultural y Economía de la Cultura de la Universidad de Valladolid, at the Facultad de Diseño y Arquitectura da Universidad de Buenos Aires, the Festival de Cultura Digital de Rio de Janeiro, the Festival Internacional de la Imagen (Manizales) and the Universities of Antioquia and Jorge Tadeo Lozano (Bogotá). His interests today focus on the research on cultural production, philosophy of the media, expanded education, proposing dialogues between institutions and movements, from collaborative networking or the redefinition of a series of actions which join arts and cultural activism. 

Guest post: "I come from here", by Zeina Soudi (Palestine)

I met Zeina Soudi last month in Lisbon, thanks to Laurinda Alves. They´re the managers of Dialogue Café in Ramallah and Lisbon, respectively. In two hours we managed to talk about a number of issues, but what particularly caught my attention was Zeina´s quest for her identity. Born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents, she first visited Palestine as a Jordanian national.  It took her another 10 years to obtain a Palestinian ID. The question "Where are you from?” was always difficult to answer. Although the Palestinian context has, naturally, its own specificities, various parts in her narration will strike a chord with many of us and raise our awareness regarding issues of culture, identity, roots, ‘us’ and the ‘other’. mv

In Zeina Soudi´s passport.

“Where are you from?” was a question that I was asked a lot when I was younger. It was a question that confused me for years and I couldn’t answer without having to think about it. Usually the answer was a muddle. You see, I am the product of third-culture kids. I was born in Lebanon and lived in Malta and Cyprus till my late teenage years before moving to Jordan. I am a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin. But at that time I had never lived in Jordan or been to Palestine. Palestine was just a fantasy land that my parents talked of and I saw on the news. So being a foreigner in these countries, the question “Where are you from?” was a question I always dreaded being asked, although it should be one of the simplest questions anyone would have to answer.

My journey to affirm and reaffirm my identity took a lot of twists and turns, confusion and restrictions; starting with the question “Where are you from?”.

I spent my last two years of school in Amman, and even though I did get a sense of belonging, there was still something missing. There was a little part of me that I still needed to find to feel complete. So after I finished school, I decided to go to Palestine alone and enroll in university there. This decision was going to be the start of a very difficult journey. This was in 1997.

As you know Palestine is still occupied. And going there means I had to have a permit from Israel which proved to be more difficult than I ever imagined. When I finally got the permit the first time, I made it half way through the borders, but was denied entry at the Israeli borders. When I questioned why, they replied “For security reasons”.

Security reasons? How much of a security threat can I be by going to university to major in English Language and Literature? That didn’t matter to them. They stamped “Entry DENIED” on my passport and sent me back to Amman. These 2 words on my passport changed the course of my life. I was only 18 years old at the time. It wasn’t until years later that I would find out why I was such a ‘security threat’.

I came so close yet still far away. It reminded me of A Letter to His son by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani:

“I heard you in the other room asking your mother, 'Mama, am I a Palestinian?'. When she answered 'Yes', a heavy silence fell on the whole house. It was as if something hanging over our heads had fallen, its noise exploding, then - silence. Afterwards...I heard you crying. I could not move. There was something bigger than my awareness being born in the other room through your bewildered sobbing. It was as if a blessed scalpel was cutting up your chest and putting there the heart that belongs to you...I was unable to move to see what was happening in the other room. I knew, however, that a distant homeland was being born again: hills, olive groves, dead people, torn banners and folded ones, all cutting their way into a future of flesh and blood and being born in the heart of another child... Do you believe that man grows? No, he is born suddenly - a word, a moment, penetrates his heart to a new throb. One scene can hurl him down from the ceiling of childhood onto the ruggedness of the road.”

But I didn’t give up so easily. And I tried again and again until I got a permit and finally went to Palestine.

Architectural draft of the, under construction, Palestinian Museum, which will be dedicated to the exploration and understanding of the culture, history and society of Palestine and the Palestinian people. Read an interview with the museum director here.  

I was slowly learning how many different identity cards us Palestinians are forced to have.  And these different identities determine which road to take or city you can go to. For example, I wasn’t allowed to go to Jerusalem, where I am originally from. We Palestinians are forced to be separated and categorized according to where we are from and the color of our identity cards.

After the second Intifada broke out, I decided to stay in Palestine to finish my degree; that’s when I became an “illegal-alien” in my homeland and spent 8 years in an open air prison, unable to travel for fear of being permanently denied entry to my homeland. I was persistent on planting my roots here, just as my parents, grandparents and great grandparents did. Even though it felt claustrophobic at times, and I felt like giving up, I finally got what I wanted. I affirmed my identity on paper. I took my right to a Palestinian identity card, and I became “legal”. This was my way for resisting this injustice. This was my way to affirm my identity. This is probably why to the Israeli occupation I was a security threat.

And here I am still today, sitting at home in my living room, with all my friends, all different colored ID cards, different passports, those who were born in Palestine and those like me raised in different countries. We all walked a different path in life. But we all have one thing in common, we are all persistent. We all refuse this injustice. We all refuse to be categorized. We all wake up every day and say NO to the occupation.

And at the end of the day, when somebody asks me “Where are you from?” I can easily say: “I Come From Here”.

Zeina Soudi is currently managing the Dialogue Cafe in Ramallah. The Dialogue Cafe is an open video-conferencing network that brings people from all walks of life, around the world, together to exchange ideas, knowledge, and experiences, dealing with different cultures, societies and traditions. Zeina previously worked in NGOs dealing with human rights and social development, as well as projects dealing with Palestinian Art and Culture. She started out her career as an English teacher.

Guest post: "'The Fairy Queen' in South Africa", by Shirley Apthorp

I met Shirley Aprthorp a few months ago in a conference in Lisbon. At that time, I heard her speak about young people in South Africa filling a 6000-seat venue in order to participate in a national opera contest (a “dying” art form, some say…). After that, we stayed in touch through Facebook, and there I could follow all the preparations for the presentation of Purcell´s The Fairy Queen in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In this post, Shirley writes about the love for opera among South African school children; about Umculo, the music organization she founded; and about her conviction that South Africa has a huge role to play in the future of opera as a meaningful artform for the whole world. mv

The Fairy Queen, Umculo 2012/2013 (Photo: Neil Baynes)

Guest post: "The genuine 'Hungaricum'", by Angéla Hont (Hungary)

The event that definitely marked my first visit to Budapest was the dance-house experience. Seeing people of all ages, but mostly young people, enjoying their Saturday night playing, singing and dancing their folk music was something I had never seen before. It was the energy, the pleasure, the pride, the joy this experience involved that made it truly special. And also the possibility to be part of it, to be taken into the round dance, to try to pick up the steps and enjoy the party in the company of the locals. My friend and colleague Angéla Hont is passionate about her country´s folk culture. As Head of Marketing at the Hungarian Heritage House, she has the possibility to work for the promotion of this valuable heritage, both nationally and internationally (the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Wahsington this summer will be celebrating the Hungarian heritage and Angéla will be there). In this guest post she presents the dance-house movement and shares a bit of her passion with us. mv  

Photo: Hungarian Heritage House

I have been in the dance-house movement since the age of 6. It is natural for me that it is part of my professional life and leisure time; it charges me physically and spiritually. I am not the only one to live like this. Thousands of people in Budapest and all over Hungary, as well as in neighboring countries and the whole world (from Australia to South America) share this feeling.

But why could this be important for those who are not part of this subculture? For those who visit Hungary as tourists or come on a business trip? For those who are looking for genuine and unique features while exploring a new country? For those who like to identify a nation with things that are typical only to locals?

Ladies and Gentlemen, because this is Hungary’s unique specialty. All Hungarians can be proud of it and all foreigners can learn it. The dance-house and the resulting dance-house movement is a real Hungaricum.

Talking about Hungary and Hungarians to a foreigner, a number of stereotypes come up, form paprika to the spas, from the Nobel laureates to the view of the Danube with the Parliament, from the goulasch to the puszta, from the poppy-seed bread (mákos guba) to the most beautiful women in the world, from the palinka to the Herend porcelain, from Puskás to Bartók and to Imre Kertész. However, if we are honest to ourselves, we have to admit that, even though we think that these things, lives, and results are outstanding and worth telling the world, none of them is truly unique. Special buildings, food, manufactured goods, beautiful views and people can be found in almost every country; they are just called jalapeño, Grand Canyon, Taj Mahal, Ronaldo, Michelangelo, the Dead Sea or the porcelain of Meissen.

Before explaining why the dance-house is so special, let’s have a short overview of its history for the sake of those not familiar with this unique phenomenon.

The first dance-house was organized in Budapest on 6 May 1972 in the banquet hall of the Book Club on Liszt Ferenc Square, with the contribution of four folk dance ensembles and some professional ethnographers. It might look a rather meager result at first sight, given the multiple layers of our folk culture which were refined during centuries. Yet, it needs to be noted that all this could have not happened without the preceding almost one hundred years: from the first phonograph-recorded folk songs by Béla Vikár (1896), through the world famous oeuvres of Bartók and Kodály, the Gyöngyös Bokréta (Bouquet of Pearls; see here) movement in the 1930’s and 1940’s, to the folk dance research by György Martin and his colleagues. Finally, in the beginning of the 70s, a group of urban youth had the chance to participate in a so-called dance-house in Sic (Romania) and marvel at the special atmosphere of an authentic live music dancing party that is based on improvisation, yet strictly regulated. Wishing to share this experience with their friends, these young men organized the first dance-houses. Having been private events for political reasons at first, dance-houses opened to the public a year later. Since then, anyone could join the dance-houses in Budapest and, within a few years, all over the country. After a decade, the first National Dance-house Festival and Fair was organized (1982) as the parade of folk music, folk dance and handicraft. In order to maintain the high standards and an adequately wide repertory, folk music and dance research increased. Ever since the political changes in 1989, even the most remote villages in the Carpathian Basin can offer the chance to meet elderly residents who did not grow up under the effects of globalization. Folk dance groups boomed, its members spreading in more and more regions. So much so that, by now, dance styles are not only distinguished by regions but by villages or even by their authentic performers.

Folk music education got a huge impetus as well, since dance-houses needed musicians and folk music bands who were able to play the music of several regions all night long. Nowadays, folk music and dance can be learned from elementary school to university level. Dozens of folk music camps offer the possibility to be immersed in the music, handicraft heritage and dances of specific regions (according to the webpage of dance-house Guild, there is a selection of about 60 Hungarian folk art camps available in 2013.) In due course, various institutions and organizations were created all over the country in association to the dance-house movement (e.g. Folk Dance Resource Centre, 1981; Union of Hungarian Folk Art Associations, 1985; “Heritage” Children’s Folk Art Association, 1990). In 2001, the Hungarian Heritage House was founded as the background institution of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. The community building potential of dance-houses is well proven by the fact that today different generations gather in pubs and cultural centers where Hungarian dance-houses are regularly held, not just in Budapest, but all over Hungary. Moreover, dance-houses are held all over the Carpathian Basin as well as in Japan, USA, Australia, or England.

Before the movement is stigmatized as nationalist, it has to be noted that other ethnic groups living in  Hungary (e.g. Southern Slavs, Greeks, Bulgarians) soon took over this appealing method and started to organize their own dance-houses. Hungarian dance-houses, on the other hand, feature the Hungarian verbunk of Szatmár region, but also ethnic Romanian dances from Méhkerék, Southeastern Hungary, the csángó round dances from Moldova, or Gypsy dances from Nagyecsed.

The dance-house and the dance-house-method built on it – the method of applying rural heritage in the 21^th century society – has been a success; other countries have taken over this practice of Hungarian culture and it also served as a model for the Slovak dance-house movement. The Hungarian dance-house method is part of the UNESCO Register of Best Safeguarding Practices of Intangible Cultural Heritage, thus serving as a role model for other nations to preserve their own cultural heritage in a modern world.

Photo: Hungarian heritage House

And what is a dance-house after all? Dance-house is a cultural space where professionals and beginners, older and younger alike have the chance to dance authentic dances to live folk music and to party together in the way of their ancestors, varying steps which were refined from generation to generation, evolved in a strictly regulated folk culture but always shaped to the individual. Those who don’t know these dances should not be afraid as, in a real dance-house, a dance teacher can be found teaching the steps for beginners so that in a short time they will be able to form their own dance from these steps.

Nowadays, when anywhere in the world children are watching the same animation movies, teenagers are adoring the same pop stars, listening to the same hits, young (and less young) women are searching for inspiration in the same fashion magazines and considering the same top models as their ideals, peolpe are reading the same books and watching the same films, it is an especially great achievement that there are some places where youth in jeans are having fun to their own music and dance with their heart.

I wish that if you come to Hungary you can take this experience and feeling home with you!

Angéla Hont works at the Hungarian Heritage House, a governmental cultural institute founded in 2001 with the purpose of cultivating and promoting the folk tradition of the Carpathian Basin. As Head of Marketing and Sales, she is in charge of establishing institutional co-operations, managing a great variety of programmes and marketing activities. She has also assisted in the preparation of press releases, managing public relations, and developing programme policies for Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, as well as the auxiliary activities of the Theatre. She is the Founder and Secretary of the Association of the Hungarian Heritage House’s Circle of Friends. She holds a Master’s degree in International Studies with a diplomacy major from the Corvinus University of Budapest (formerly known as the Budapest University of Economy) and a Master’s degree in Ethnography from the Eötvös Lorand University. At the age of 6, she started dancing in Bihari János Folk Dance Ensemble, one of the highest-ranking non-professional folk dance groups of Hungary.

Guest post: "One can´t make omelets without breaking eggs - Regarding the project Temporary Occupations", by Elisa Santos (Maputo - Mindelo - Lisbon)

I enjoyed very much listening to Elisa Santos talking about the Temporary Occupations. Projects like this one, which bring people together around an idea, which look for new ways, which make things happen ‘despite’, they always draw my attention, they transmit enthusiasm to me, they remind me that a lot, so much indeed, is possible when people want to. But there is a limit and Elisa is determined to remind us of it. There is a limit that the will to do should not surpass; because we have a responsibility and because we owe respect, to the works, to the artists and to the audiences. mv 

On Jaimito´s Facebook, 24th of July Av., Maputo, 2011. A citizen is leaving a comment on artist Azagaia´s installation.  (Photo: Ocupações Temporárias)

It is a fallacy, one frequently used in these times of scarce resources, to assume that it is possible to do without means, crossdressing the argument with epithets of innovation and entrepreneurship. The whole exaltation, more or less naive, more or less politcally adjusted, that it is this “magic” that will save us, is a serious contribution towards disinformation, decapitalization and the implementation of a strategy of mediocrity, in any field. This is my firm conviction. And it is equally firm with regards to any field, but even more in what concerns the artistic and cultural field in particular.  

In 2010 I challenged a group of six Mozambican artists to make an exhibition in different molds than the ones they were used to and as an answer to a pressing issue in the city of Maputo which they themselves were proclaiming: the suffocation felt by artists, caused by the lack of spaces of presentation (the existing ones have a closed and repetitive programming) and of audiences (equally closed and repetitive). This suffocation was not related to the quantity of woks produced, but to the incentives for creation, since the spaces for critique, the opportunities for discussion, for the exchange and contact with new languages, tecniques and issues seemed to bypass the circuit of presentation of the capital of Mozambique.

Meeting with artists for the 2010 edition. (Photo: Ocupações Temporárias)

To make an exhibition, or rather six exhibitions, in two months, with a coordination/production totally unknown to the local agents and possible funders, with a group of artists doing a number of other things that would guarantee their living and without an institution formally promoting it, can it be considered venture without means? It may seem like it, but it´s not. The first “version” of Temporary Occupations  - this is the project name – was discussed in meetings on a esplanade, was produced on coffee shop tables and using free public Wi-Fi; its opening date was set to coincide with the Jo’burg Art Fair, in the (perhaps naive) hope that curators, commissioners, buyers, collectors that would attend the event might become interested in Maputo, just around the corner; Facebook and a blog were the main means of promotion and communication. These were the means available. The artists themselves put their own means at the disposal of the project. The first Occupations had a financial support of 3.000USD. In our final report we accounted for the pro bono contributions (production, design and translation, for example), but we were never able to account for all the means that were made available in order to make the Occupations happen.

In 2011 we wanted to risk again. We thought that it would be easier to raise funds, because we had a file that proved our seriousness and transparency in managing the project, the involvement of the participants and the sustainability of the idea, which did not have as a base a fixed, heavy and expensive structure estructure and that, above all, there was a need, that is, it was not a commitment imposed by a calendar, but an action justified in the city´s artistic and cultural context. All arguments were acknowledged, we were praised and pointed out as an interesting case – both in what concerns the essence of the project and its management -, nevertheless, the financial resources, in particular the funds for international cooperation, are aimed at reinforcing institutions and civil society, where we did not fit because we were not a legal entity, that is, the project was not based on a formal organization, did not correspond with the calendars of funding allocations, did not guarantee its existence for the next year. Even though, we persisted and the subject chosen for the Temporary Occupations 20.11 was Precariousness.  The opening took place on the 11^th of September and we had the support of Goethe Institut in Maputo and the Swiss Embassy, in a total of €2000.

View of artist Paulo Kapela´s installation in the streets of Maputo, 2012. (Photo: Ocupações Temporárias)

The conditions for this version of the Occupations were even harder than the previous year´s, nevertheless, it mobilized the artists of 2010 and those of 2011, and once again friends, acquaintances, strangers who had seen us the year before and, once more, there was a lot of investment (also financial) on behalf of those involved. The result was very positive, but, as an international commissioner said, it had reached the limit of what was possible, of what was acceptable. Because there is a limit for the dignity (of the works, of the artists, of the audiences) assessed according to the conditions of presentation, of production and enjoyment of an exhibition.  

In 2012, the Temporary Occupations, under the theme of Foreigners, finally had what one might call “the means”, thanks to the exclusive funding of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which decided to support the exhibition in Maputo and to propose and promote it in two more countries (Cape Vert and Angola) and also to schedule in 2013, in its head office in Lisbon, a documental exhibition of the whole process. Without these resources, without this support, the Occupations in Maputo wouldn´t have happened, not in the molds they did actually happen, not even in the molds of previous editions. It wouldn´t have been possible to insist on askingalways  for the support of the same people just to prove that we have the capacity to make things happen, when this capacity, although acknowledged in theory, did not get in return the support of those institutions which aim to support this kind of initiatives. Without these means, the Occupations would have terninated in 2011.

All the editions fulfilled the initial objectives: to attract the attention of different audiences that would be confronted with the works in the public space; to confront the artists with new spaces. Although it is not possible to count the number of visitors, the works have undeniably been seen by thousands if people. Another, more specific, audience - that of cultural agents, artists and arts students – also saw the Occupations and there was a lot of conversation, discussions and stands regarding the initiative. To prove this, one may consider the interest expressed regarding the dates and themes of the following edition, the ways to apply, as well as the invitations to talk or write about this initiative.

Although the Temporary Occupations were seen, since their first edition, at distance, from a number of programmers, critics, curators, gallery owners and other artists, we have not managed to gain international notoriety, to draw the attention of new markets, namely the south african one, to give national visibility to the production of contemporary art; these were very big challenges that we wouldn´t be able to reach when the big majority of promotional materials was not translated, there were no catalogues of all the editions, there was not a good technical support or good images of the works, there was not a website or a good archive, allowing to access the information and the documentation of the different exhibitions.

Installation by artist Bento Oliveira at the Porto Grande airport on S.Vicente island, Cape Vert, 2012. (Photo: Ocupações Temporárias)

The great importance of the support received for 2012 and 2013 is exactly the fact that it made available financial and other resources, that made the exhibitions and other actions possible in order to internationalize the artists and to give visibility to a new production stemming from the emergence of an artistic community with new practices, different discourses and other proposals of intervention.  

As I stated in the beginning, the praise of the lack of resources as a potential instigator of creation and production, is false, and it may even become dangerous in what concerns the quality and independence of what is being produced.  The Temporary Occupations would be different with more means, with other menas, but would have never existed, as nothing exists, without means.

The exhibition Temporary Occupations – Documents may be seen at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon until May 26. Admission is free.

Elisa Santos was an independent cultural producer until 2002, when she took the post of Director of Production at the Teatro do Campo Alegre in Oporto. She worked in projects of cooperation and development in Angola and Mozambique between 2003 and 2012. She is a consultor in the fields of volunteering and cooperation, maintaining her activity as producer in the cultural field.