Perform Europe Announces Live Program for 2022

Circus News

Perform Europe Announces Live Program for 2022

Setting out to redefine how performing art works can reach audiences in more fair, inclusive, and sustainable ways, Perform Europe has announced its Live Program. From now until the end of June 2022, the Perform Europe Live Program offers more than 250 presentations of over 45 artistic works in 27 Creative Europe countries and the UK.  The Program offers in-person and virtual performances from both established and up-and-coming artists, hosted by a diverse group of presenters.

Perform Europe is an EU-funded project which aims to rethink cross-border performing arts presentations in a more inclusive, sustainable, and balanced way. The project is an 18-month-long journey that includes a research phase, launching a digital platform, placing an open call for producers and presenters of performing arts works, testing a support scheme, and designing policy recommendations. Perform Europe’s ultimate goal is to design a future support scheme for cross-border tours and for the digital distribution of performing arts in the 40 Creative Europe countries.

Between December 2020 and June 2021, Perform Europe conducted research that explored and mapped the context in which performing art works have been presented across borders in the past few years. Their research team identified and analyzed the current issues and disparities in the European system of performing arts touring and presentation, and indicated solutions to help bring about needed change.

Based on the learning points of their research, Perform Europe launched their digital platform, where they invited artists and organizations to apply to the program. The platform helps applicants network and share best practices for sustainable and inclusive touring and distribution.

The 11-member Perform Europe Jury selected 19 ambitious partnerships from their application pool to proceed onto the next phase of the project. Made up of more than 85 producers and presenters from Creative Europe countries and the UK, these 19 partnerships collectively represent all performing arts disciplines. Their aim is to bring high-quality performances to rural areas and involve local artists and participants, empowering the voices of migrant artists and communities. All of them come ready to test innovative touring and distribution schemes.

From now until the end of June 2022, the Perform Europe Live Program offers more than 250 presentations of over 45 artistic works in 27 Creative Europe countries and the UK. The full program includes a wide range of themes reflective of our times: love; belonging; hope; loneliness; the coexistence of people and inanimate objects; nature as a partner in co-creating performances; ritual and power; the naked body seen and explored beyond ideals of beauty; the topography of cities based on the physical, emotional, and political safety of women; queer, Arab and Muslim identity based on 13th-century manuscripts; diversely sighted young audiences exploring the world through movement; and our physical and virtual future.

As the program unfolds, the 19 Perform Europe partnerships will use slow travel as a framework to create and showcase their work, reduce carbon-intensive practices, refocus on experiences of nature and the body, and bridge the gap between audiences and artists with disabilities. They will further involve communities in their projects through the use of technology, bringing artistic work to new places via apps and virtual reality. Additionally, their works will help promote queer, feminist, decolonial, migrant, human-centered, artist-led, and ecological initiatives.

Throughout this program, Perform Europe intends to develop policy recommendations in order to advise the European Institutions and Member States on how to integrate a support scheme for performing arts distribution into the Creative Europe program, lasting through 2027. They also aim to offer policy insights for other policy levels and fields, as well as for the sector at large.

Representing circus and street arts in Perform Europe is Circostarda, the European Network for Circus and Street Arts, working in tandem with other consortium members such as the International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM), the European Festivals Association (EFA), the European Dancehouse Network (EDN), and IDEA Consult.

Source: Perform Europe press release and website
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