The reconquest

Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, Washington DC (Photo: bigbirdz on Flickr)

In Ancient Greece, drama was part of what, nowadays, one would call pop or mass culture. Ancient Greeks would fill their theatres in the thousands. They would bring food with them, as they would spend the whole day at the amphitheatre. They would eat during performances and they would throw food or shout at the actors if they didn´t like what was being presented. They would also intervene, ask questions or express opinions regarding the plot.

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

The new year

I am on my way back from Washington, on the plane from Paris to Lisbon. I am in the middle seat, so I ask the young man sitting in the corridor seat to let me pass. I don´t take a proper look at him; a dark man, he could be Portuguese.

I start reading my book. Some time later, I feel that the man next to me is a bit nervous. I look at his hands: he´s got a cap, his mobile and a few rolled pages of a text in english. I try to, discreetly, have a better look at him. He´s not Portuguese, he´s of Arab origin. I look again at his hands. His mobile is on and he keeps checking it. The text in the rolled pages is scientific, I can´t understand which area exactly.

The air hostesses pass and offer drinks. He refuses. “Ramadan”, I think to myself. He keeps checking his phone and he makes me nervous too. I look at him again, his eyes are closed and his lips are moving. Is he praying? I am getting even more nervous. I am trying to tell myself that he looks like a perfectly normal man, but there´s another inner voice telling me “Don´t they all look normal?”.

I place my book on the table in front of me, it´s by an Arab author (am I trying to send a message?). Many thoughts are passing through my mind. One of them is to get up and go tell the cabin crew that I have a nervous Arab sitting next to me and that his mobile is on... I´m forcing myself to stay where I am, feeling ridiculous. And then he says:

-          What are you reading?

-          It´s a Moroccan writer.

-          I thought so.

-          Are you Moroccan too?

-          Yes, I am.

He aks if he can have a look. He picks my book up and reads the summary. We then start discussing politics. Religion too. He asks me about Greece, we talk extensively about Egypt and then about Morocco too. He´s on his way to Portugal for a conference on applied mathematics. I´m enjoying the conversation, he has a calm voice and he seems to be a sweet man, but I can´t stop feeling nervous. Whenever there´s a moment of silence, he checks his mobile. “Don´t they all look normal?”, the inner voice insists.

As soon as we land in Lisbon, he tells me: “Do you know that the chances of a plane crashing are much smaller than of two trains colliding?”. He´s not nervous, I am not nervous. I feel relieved. And I feel ashamed.

____________________

There are two entrances to the exhibition of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, one with the sign “Prejudiced”, the other “Not prejudiced”. Those who try to enter through the second door, find it closed, they can´t open it. The incident on the plane kept haunting my thoughts. I did feel ashamed. If the man next to me didn´t look Arab, I would have felt different about his nervousness.

Organizations and people working in the fields of racism and discrimination keep reminding us that we are not born racists, we become. And after we become, it seems that we really have to fight hard, consciously and with determination, to avoid discriminating others. After discussing the incident on the plane with some people, I realised how difficult this fight is. Because, in order to fight, we first need to be conscious of our discriminating actions, we need to be aware of our own attitudes. Quite often we are not. We never think of ourselves as racists and a number of excuses are good enough for us to justify our thoughts and actions: the need to be safe, the need to protect the people we love and our communities, the need to preserve our culture and traditions, the need to defend our territory, the need to guarantee our survival... So, if necessary and ‘just in case’, the Other might have to pay the price for it. And “that´s OK, it´s understandable, we´re good people caring for our own”...

This ‘just in case’ has served as an excuse for many simple people in their everyday decisions, as well as for major political decisions. Post-9/11 America inevitably comes to mind. But even there - as I realized by reading Leila Ahmed´s insightful book A Quiet Revolution – The Veil´s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America -, in the middle of the destruction, the pain, the fear, the anger, the violence, people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds were able to take a good look at themselves and to be solidarious to others, determined to preserve their multicultural communities, to maintain ans protect their relatinionships with friends and neighbours, to continue being and feeling human. It´s such a thin line between the civilized and the barbarian; it requires such an effort to be the former and not the latter.

September is more of a ‘new year’ to me than January; it comes from school times. It is the moment where I look ahead and think “Now what?” or “What next?”. At this precise moment, having the ‘new year’ ahead of me, my head is full of questions. I think again of my time at the Kennedy Center, there where Egyptians talk with Israelis; Pakistanis and Indians exchange jokes about their countries; a Serb, a Croat and a Bosnian take photos together; a Greek and a Turk enjoy a meal together. Is this some kind of a ‘safe’ or ‘civilized’ environment? Would it be different if the context was different? Are there places where people are civilized and other places where those same people turn into barbarians? Can culture really play a role in keeping us civilized or are its ‘effects’ easily neutralized by other forces and factors? Can it help create some common ground, where people can co-exist in good terms, not simply tolerating each other, but getting to know each other better; willing to talk, to understand, to accept? Wasn't it Fouad Laroui´s book that helped start a conversation on that plane, that helped control the fear? My ‘new year’ resolutions lie somewhere among all these questions.

Read also
Can Culture make it?

Until September...

... some of those who kept me very good company, might do it for you too...

Kennedy Center: the end of the adventure

Photo: Ihor Poshyvailo

I don´t think I would be exagerating if I said that the Fellowship at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was the most significant professional experience I had in the last years.

It opened up new worlds for me, it showed me new ways and different realities, it helped me breath, get inspired, think.

Thanks to the Kennedy Center and DeVos Institute staff,  thoughts, ideas, doubts, convictions and practices got organised and started making sense, turning me, I believe, into a better, more knowledgeable and capable, professional.

Further more, thanks to the great opportunity of meeting and working with arts managers from all over the world, intelligent and inspiring people, my knowledge got deeper and so much more diverse.

And there´s more: being among all these very special, dedicated and determined people, I was reminded that, if we allow others to make less of us, we´re not the best we can be, we´re not doing the best we can do; they helped me overcome the fear and do what I had to do.

My profound thanks to the Kennedy Center / DeVos Institute staff and to all Fellows: for everything I learned with and from you and which will stay with me, forever.

My equally profound thanks to Rui Catarino, Cecília Folgado and Rui Belo: I wouldn´t have done this without you.

Posts written during the Fellowship

2011

Starting at the Kennedy Center

On leadership

On family

On planning

Reminders – After four weeks at theKennedy Center

2012

Comfort and disturbance

Comfort and disturbance – Part II

2013

Meet Rosa Shaw

Graduation Day

Meet Rosa Shaw

Rosa Shaw (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

Meet Rosa Shaw. She’s the first person to greet us when we enter the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She’s one of the memorial’s guards and one of the institution’s faces. She’s polite, she has a good sense of humour, she’s helpful. If someone looks lost or confused, she doesn’t wait for them to ask for help, she approaches and tries to see if she can be of assistance. The uniform could cause some inhibition to the visitors - a permanent concern among those of us working in the communications field – but, looking at Rosa and the way she does her job, it becomes clear that, more than a question of aspect, it’s a question of attitude.

Rosa makes me think of many guards I have encountered in museums. People who look terribly bored and tired; or people who avoid eye contact when we enter a room and then follow us closely, although we are the only visitor in that room; or people who might be loudly discussing family or union problems, paying no attention to visitors. Guards of this kind make me think of how much more interesting their job could be, and how big the benefit for the museum or the cultural institution they serve, if they were given appropriate training and different responsibilities - more responsibilities - than just sitting on a chair or standing at a corner, looking stern and bored, having as little interaction with visitors as possible.

Guards at the Brooklyn Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou)

I am saying this, because I’ve also had other kinds of experiences. A couple of years ago, I joined a guided tour to the Pastrana Tapestries exhibition at the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon. As soon as the tour was over and as I was heading for the exit, I overheard a guard having a conversation with two ladies, explaining everything one needed to know about those works of art, but with an enthusiasm and commitment that equaled those of the education department staff. And in a language that was much more accessible than that of the texts on the panels. More recently, while visiting the El Anatsui exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, I overheard two guards exchanging views regarding one of the works of art on display. It was a pleasure listening to them. Later on, one of them greeted a small group of visitors and offered to take their photo in front of one of the works, so that they could all be in it. The whole atmosphere was light and friendly and informal, I felt that it made such a big difference.

Museum guards might look silent and stern, even threatening some times, but they have eyes and feelings and opinions regarding the works that surround them. The Washington Post published a very interesting piece on Washington museum guards a few weeks ago (read here), where they would talk about their favourite work of art and the reasons why it is their favourite. One of them also mentioned how working in a museum awakened her interest in art and consequently made her look at all things in a different way. Reading their interviews made me think of how much I would have enjoyed having a direct conversation with them, both as a visitor and a professional.

Front-of-house staff in cultural institutions (whether guards, ushers or box office assistants) are some of the most important people in the team, in terms of institutional marketing. They are the face, they are the voice, they are the attitude. They are the ears too, as they get closer to the visitors/audiences than most of the administrative staff ever get. Front-of-house staff have a decisive role in the shaping of the quality of the whole experience of visiting a cultural institution. A disappointing exhibition or a performance that turned out to be a disaster will not make people keep away for ever; people take a risk and know that it might not fulfill their expectations. On the other hand, if someone is not well treated, if they come across staff who are impolite or in a bad mood, who lack information, who are unhelpful or show that they don’t care, this might definitely determine if someone will come back or not. Even when we have to make a choice between two interesting exhibitions or two interesting shows, it’s very probable that customer care, the place where we feel that we are better treated, will make all the difference in our decision.

Despite their strategic position and role, though, front-of-house staff get to be very neglected by management; underestimated too. They are not given the appropriate training in public relations and customer care; they are not given information about what it is that they are guarding or selling or taking people to their seats to see; quite often, they are not even given important information about what’s going on in the institution, in terms of programming or timetables or prices/discounts or other practical information the public might be looking for (have you ever experienced the discomfort and embarrassment of a Front-of-House member of staff who can’t answer a logical question or, worse, who is informed by a visitor on what is happening in the institution he/she is working for?); they feel frustrated by the fact that their opinion is not taken into consideration, even when it concerns visitor opinions or comments which they are simply passing on, as they are the ones who hear or receive them.

Front-of-house staff don’t ‘just’ guard or ‘just’ sell or ‘just’ answer the phone or ‘just’ take people to their seats. They are a valuable part of the team, they are the most visible part. They are the ones that welcome people in, talk to them, promote the institution – not only its contents but also its vision and principles. It seems only too obvious and natural to me that they would be given the tools to do their work and to do it well. Rosa seems to be pleased in doing her job. And it’s  certainly a pleasure to watch her doing it.

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.