Report 28th of November 2018
Present: Mary Conlon, Mary Conroy, Iwona Preis, Jonas Myrstrand, Magdalena Zakrzewska-Duda, Dorota Hryniewicz, Roman Sebastyanski, Agnieszka Wolodzko, Martine Meire, Virginie Michils, Gretel Vanmeert, Siegfried Vynck, Skarlas Lampros, Rafika Saouis, Liz Gardiner, Tara Beall
First meeting of the City Lab#1.
Iwona Preis of Intercult (Sweden) and Magdalena Zakrzewska-Duda of BSCC (Poland) explain to all partners the context and direction of the project ‘Memory of Water’, based on the documents ‘Final project plan’ and ‘Guidance on contractual project management. Creative Europe – Culture Sub-programme Support for European Cooperation projects 2018 and Support for cooperation projects related to the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018. Calls EACEA 32/2017 and 35/2017’.
We used this first meeting also as a steering group meeting to refresh all partners with the project description and project application while also exploring any new/additional possibilities of the EU funding. We discuss how to handle the rules, to read and deal with the budget, who to update our time schedules, what the responsibilities are of each partner, the agenda of the following two days in Ostend and the expectations of the whole project so that we can ensure that one of us is being aware of the planning and activities and we can be sure of a high quality and effectiveness.
Mary Conlon delivers the context frame for the artists.The artists meet for the first time. During the following days they will discuss and share ideas/practice proposals for development. Greek Artist Rafika Saouis gives us on this evening meeting an explanation of her projects. She worked in war zones with refugees on e.g. Lesbos with refugees coming from Turkey. She empowers the refugees in their own space by means of artist interventions. It’s a methodology we want to work with in our project ‘Memory of water’. An other project of hers is working with local children and their dreams about a different society; meaning that they want (some) freedom to chose (a future) for themselves. We share her vision that art is a way to raise questions and to start with a dialogue. How do people see their neighbourhood and heritage places, stories and memories, their future and the possibilities of (the combination of) both, … We take the time for questions about her art projects and vison linked with our three key topics: memory and heritage, access and inclusivity and environmental responsibilities/impacts. We need also an answer to the question how to reach a sustainable project in the long term and to pay attention to the unique character of each waterplace/harbour? On the same time the other artists share and deal their ideas and inspirations with her.
At the end of the meeting we collect all partner agreements.