Players of the artistic field got stamped and stigmatized as NOT relevant to the System – that is the most impressing picture that was painted during the lock down due to the Covid 19 situation since the start of pandemic measures and is still ongoing - It is being said that Arts and culture, artists and art education are not relevant for the system! We ask our selves if this is true? And we confirm that this claim is certainly wrong! We would rather claim that Arts, arts education and creativity belong to the most relevant fields in time of crises: this is valid for all European countries. Furthermore we would seek for solutions in order to improve the relevance of the artistic field, to fight against an certain art immunity that decision makers seem to being developing; artists want to help in the system of political decision making to rethink the topic of professional relevance priorities. Beyond that, artists would like to find answers to how to gaining an audience for (digital) artistic work and performances; therefore they would need to make researches for learning new digital semantic, how to raising knowledge for gaining an (new) audience. Most of the us artists, agency, arts schools, arts educators ask ourselves how to empower public artistic activities such as performances. The project would focus on activating the debate around professional relevancy discussion in the context of the pandemic, around the question of ephemerality of artistic stage productions within a communal policy and the difficulty to access to new audiences. It will also aim to raise the awareness for artistic processes methods and artistic trainings in order to transfer it into adult education training programs and to trigger the huge creativity potential of citizens of all age. Therefore the Partners’ knowledge will be extended and enriched by common experience as well as by diversified national and regional differences. The project will give answers to these questions by starting systemizing the individual questions and answers of our European partners due to their specific cultural environment in order to built up: a sample of good examples which would prove how arts, creative activities and approaches offer tools and new perspectives to empower resilience and innovativity as well as creative expressiveness and skilss development. The project partners will conceive workshops , public events and round tables in order to confirm their claim saying that art is definitely relevant to society and its citizens especially in the context of crisis and to explore new paths for gaining knowledge around the topic of new audiences and skills development among the non professional art performing adults as well as for professional artits on educational issues. The project would give rise, justifiably to remove the impression among the political claim that Art and Creativity are not relevant, by giving answers an impulses against social isolation and the seek for resilience, psychical and physical health , for social wellbeing The project would help empowering local groups to go for discourses with stakeholders. It would also help building a media library and a logbook in order to keep a record of the processes. The project would furthermore strengthen the access to work on social and political topics by seeing for artistic solutions which could be transferable .
The project partners create proven artistic methods and approaches for training programmes in adult education to activate the creative potential of citizens of all ages. Each partner systematically develops questions based on the specific cultural context in order to provide a selection of good examples of how art, creative activities and approaches, provide tools and new perspectives to strengthen resilience and inventiveness as well as creative expression in otherwise non-artistic citizens (lay people). The participating artists and arts facilitators develop a workshop concept that clearly presents artistic processes for creativity development. From this, trainings can be derived that can also be applied by non-professional artists. Overall, the project serves as a self-reflection on the relevance of art, the strengthening of the creativity of citizens and audience development. It addresses the target group A of mediators: artists, art and adult educators and B: the target group of recipients from the institutional cultural sector and from community work.
Arts and culture are areas that suffered particularly from the Covid 19 pandemic and were not considered essential to the system. After this impressive and depressing experience, the impact of which we can still feel today, the partners of the project have decided to make a contribution that strengthens the presence of the arts, which is more necessary than ever for our society and its citizens. The aim of the project is to use mediation processes to raise awareness of contemporary artistic processes and new forms, and at the same time to tap into the enormous creative potential of each individual and to communicate individual potential. Together we have put together a selection of tried and tested processes and methods that show how art and creative action can provide tools and new perspectives for building resilience and innovation, as well as creating expressiveness and offering strength to work on social and political issues. The materials and instructions, as well as a wealth of contributions on individual artistic practice, are available for free use at www.viral-visions.eu.