Save the Date: Theme Days on National and International Collaboration in the Independent Performing Arts

The independent performing arts community has been networked nationally and internationally since the very beginning. Artists, collectives, producing institutions and performance venues go on tour, exchange perspectives and develop aesthetic and societal questions together. This national and international focus strengthens artistic quality, discursive spaces and innovations far beyond the local contexts. The coronavirus pandemic also failed to destroy these valuable relationships and many networks proved themselves to be extremely resilient and adaptable. At the moment, these connections are facing new, real challenges: a societal shift to the right on the one hand and massive budget cuts on the other are endangering exchange, mobility and sustainable collaboration. How resilient are our national and international relationships and what strategies are needed in order to maintain connections beyond their own borders and expand them? 

With these and other questions in hand, the Berlin Performing Arts Program, together with the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste (the German Federal Association of the Independent Performing Arts) and the ITI – International Theater Institute, invites you to a two-day exchange: 

The focus will be placed on the expansion and maintenance of specific working relationships between culture makers working nationally and internationally as well as the cultural policy framework conditions in which these are negotiated and experienced. 

As part of the Theme Days, the Berlin Performing Arts Market on May 12 offers Berlin-based artists the opportunity to present themselves and their work to a national and international audience of visiting industry professionals. The goal is to establish sustainable networks through direct contact with curators, presenters and multipliers and arrange guest performances, residencies and coproductions.

In an accompanying professional symposium, we will dedicate ourselves to structural questions on May 11 and take a look at the cultural policy framework conditions in the European Union: Which cultural policy goals in the EU following in light of persistent crises, how does it support international exchange and what does this mean for Berlin’s independent performing arts community? What do the development strategies at the state, federal and EU levels look like and how is the collaboration between the levels taking place? Where are old or new obstacles to international collaboration found and what could subservice strategies to combat these challenges look like? 

In supplemental exchange formats, we will reflect upon questions about the establishment and care of relationships as well as possible alliances, while an evening networking meeting invites everyone to informal exchanges. In addition, we will open up spaces for specific transfers of knowledge and advisement with an eye toward support and funding opportunities. 

Details about the schedule and registration will follow soon. 

The schedule of programming will be created together with our cooperations partners – the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste (The German Federal Association of the Independent Performing Arts) and the ITI – International Theater Institute.