All entries for November 2012

Keynote address at the last stage of the European Capital of Culture, Guimarães2012, Portugal.

Guimarães is in the north of Portugal and is a listed World Heritage site (I was naively expecting sunshine, but in this mountainous region it was decidedly the winter end of ‘alpine’). The year-long program has a number of strands (music, theatre, etc.). I was invited to do the keynote for the final stage of the ‘Curator’s Lab’ – intended for all contemporary art and cultural workers, including arts and urban cultural policy. The Curators' Lab’s stated intention was to ‘…create a meeting platform for different cultural producers within curatorial practice and artistic production’…. Involving exhibitions, symposia, public debates, master classes, and workshops… a temporary architecture, a collective artist-in-residence project and a publishing project. It attracts ‘artists, architects, curators, critics, writers, designers, publishers, philosophers, educators and researchers’, who all were (and still are) ‘…invited to carry out physical interventions, residences, talks, events or specific performances linked to the concepts, conversations and critical debates programmed for this space’.

The Curatorship and Concept was by the talented Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro; Co-Curatorship and Programme Coordination by Lígia Afonso. Also, great contributions and management by TRANSFORMA – the cultural catalyst and mobile arts ‘lab’. I had the pleasure of talking at length to them all.

My talk was called ‘Location Production’, as the theme of this third stage opening was devoted to the reflection on aspects and models of production and the locations of production. The opening symposium lasted two days – with wonderful food and places to visit in and around the event. The event was themes on territorial shifting, nomadism, dissemination as practice and theoretical paradigms of recent artistic production and education. It also featured wonderful speakers: Jane Rendell, Charles Quick, Michael Asbury (the Brits), and Gonçalo Leite Velho, José Maçãs de Carvalho, and Paola Berenstein Jacques/Fabiana Britto, who were all fascinating.

The event took place in the great FÁBRICA ASA, which was used for many Guimarães2012 events.

Jonathan Vickery : 09 Nov 2012 16:43 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Farewell to Marcin

During this autumn the Centre was fortunate to be visited by Dr Marcin Poprawski (ROK AMU Culture Observatory, Institute of Cultural Studies Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland). We all enjoyed his visit immensely. Articulate and academically knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects, Marcin is also the producer of Poland’s largest guitar festival, and many music CDs.

During his time here we had many discussions on many subjects, particularly the practice of cultural policy pedagogy, and the future of teaching cultural policy (and integrating it with new research in the management and organisation of the creative industries).

While attending numerous seminars (if not all scheduled seminars for all three MA programs) Marcin delivered an excellent extended lecturer-seminar, called ‘Deficits and potentials of public, private and civic management models for local Cultural Activism’. His immediate reference points were Poland and its cultural history, but his theoretical framework was relevant to all of us, and the European Union in general.

Throughout our discussion we mooted the possibility of collaborations, and set down the research and teaching areas in which we overlapped: they are….

> European culture, European cultural policy, EU, the future of European cultural democracy.

> The role of Eastern Europe in the above, and in pioneering different forms of cultural-democratic development.

> Cultural policy in cities (urban cultural policy).

> The development of cultural entrepreneurship; the relation between the cultural sector and creative industries in cultural policy.

> New forms of management and organisation of creative enterprises (arts, design, media, music, communications, internet), and how they should impact the formation of cultural policy.

> The politics of cultural policy.

Here below is Marcin receiving a small gift from the Centre Director, Dr Chris Bilton. We were all sorry to see him go, and hope we can continue a dialogue on the above.

Jonathan Vickery : 09 Nov 2012 13:22 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem