AIR (Artists-In-Residency)

AIR (Artists-in-Residency)
Exchange Programme

A number of TEH member centres have decided to develop an exchange programme between Trans Europe Halles centres that have an artist-in-residency programme and those who would like to start one.

During TEH Meeting 67 in May this year a working meeting was held and the partners are currently working on further conceptualization of the project. Later during 2009, information about the different residency-opportunities will be added on the this website and the centres involved also aim at applying for funding for the further development of the Exchange Programme.

The centers that initiated the project are Farnham Maltings (UK), L’Avant Rue (France), Pekarna (Slovenia), OZU (Italy), Arts Printing House (Lithuania), TNT (France), Stanica (Slovakia), REX (Serbia), Kultuuritehas Polymer (Estonia), PRAC (Bulgaria) and Tou Scene (Norway). At the last meeting representatives from Konstepidemin (Sweden), Alte Feuerwache (Germany), NOASS (Latvia) and Subtopia (Sweden) were also participating.

Contact: Sarah Harper at L'Avant Rue (Paris, France): firstname.lastname@wanadoo.fr

Variety of programming

All Trans Europe Halles centres are multidisciplinary, but their main artistic disciplines as well as their regular activities vary a lot.

For instance, P60’s (Amstelveen, The Netherlands) main artistic discipline is music, Ateneu Popular (Barcelona, Spain) focuses on circus and Arts Printing House (Vilnius, Lithuania) is specialised in Performing Arts.

Several centres have a strong, political agenda and focus on community development and participatory art projects that engage the local community. Among other things, the Beat Initiative (Belfast, Northern Ireland) creates carnival parades and large-scale performances. After many years of hard work with trying to get the whole local community to participate in the carnivals, the Beat Initiative has now succeeded with what seemed impossible in the beginning – for the carnival parades to be a celebration for everyone in Belfast regardless of social and religious background.

Another Trans Europe Halles centre that has received acclaim for their community work is Halles de Schaerbeek (Brussels, Belgium) that has been working with different immigrant groups for a long time through their successful neighborhood project Voisins. Manycentres, like Polymer (Tallinn, Estonia) also have a strong focus on youth work and host a great number of young volunteers.

The project Changing Room has been funded with the support from the European Commission. The work programme of TEH has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. TEH has been awarded a multi-annual operational grant by the Nordic Council of Ministers for the project Trans Nordic Net.