Wednesday
WORKSHOP I — DVORANA OHRID / 15 – 17 H
ISKRA SUKAROVA
NDA Advocacy methodology
Nomad Dance Advocates is meant to be a gathering of artists and policy and decision makers where they can communicate and exchange experiences in a different, more direct and positive way. The idea behind this is to show the world of contemporary dance to the decision makers from a different perspective. Through the performative and less formal communication and discussions, games and art works, the representatives of ministries of culture, city administrations and other decision making bodies encounter artists, discover the world behind the stage and get a better insight into the potentials of contemporary dance in today’s cultural scape.
Since 2012 Nomad Dance Advocates have met in Skopje, Sofia, Belgrade and Ljubljana. Every gathering engaged all the participants and guests into imagining the future where dance would not be an incident, but a social practice which brings people together and creates space in which we can understand and support each other.
Important part of it is the physical – dance training that helps the participants who are not familiar with dance to understand this practice better, to reconnect with their bodies and minds and to forget about their roles as politicians, representatives, delegates, officials…. The goal is to make them all be equal people who are happy to be together and exchange their knowledge so that these encounters bring beneficial fruits for the dance sector.
The physical part of the workshop will consist of a warm up, after which we will use improvisational methods to interact as a group with each other in the space we inhabit. We will work in groups and then demonstrate the physical outcomes of the improvisational tasks. The aim of the practical workshop is to focus on everyday movement vocabulary and personal dynamic qualities that we can analyse and use for further physical investigation within in our bodies in relation to the space.
WORKSHOP II — DVORANA OHRID / 15 – 17 H
AJETE KËRQELI & NITA ZEQIRI
Employing arts and culture in advocacy processes
This workshop session will explore a variety of steps essential to the practice of everyday cultural activism with particular focus in public spaces. It will provide the fundamentals necessary to kick-start advocacy practices employing arts and culture in order to create inclusive public spaces that in turn lead to social change. Throughout the working sessions we will explore arts and culture practices that engage citizens of all genders in public life through meaningful participation opportunities and develop partnerships that expand the community’s participation in the public life as well as work with central and local public institutions and organizations to create synergies for shared priorities.
WORKSHOP III — DVORANA OHRID / 15 – 17 H
NIKA KOVAČ
Grassroots campaigning: case study of water referendum, go out and
vote and yes means yes campaign
How to do campaigning without money and resources? Through the analysis of three case studies (water referendum, go out and vote and yes means yes campaign) we will tackle the importance of language, personal life testimonies and maintaining a progressive agenda in campaigning.
We will find the answers through the following questions:
~ How to mobilize your volunteers?
~ How to work with the media?
~ What are the secrets of crowdfunding?
~ How to increase democratic participation?
~ What are the biggest mistakes we made in our campaigns?
WORKSHOP IV — DVORANA OHRID / 16 H
IVAN MERCH
The Art of Protest: Werking on Countercultural Transformation
Most societies honour their living conformists and their dead troublemakers. It would be cool to find ways of dissenting, resisting and paving the way towards new futures, and not be fucked over and marginalised by dominant oppressor culture, right?
A mature counterculture understands that we shape our tools and in turn they shape us. Therefore the ways in which we organise, the ways in which we live and work and love are all advocating a political perspective. Embodied role-modeling alongside creative campaigning. We birth new cultures by living them out authentically, and culture eats strategy for breakfast. Planning, intentions, metrics are all secondary to the vibes with which imbue our communities. And art is an amplifier. Of values and ambitions and the collective zeitgeist. Installations, radio shows, murals, movies, community lunches, street demos – what it all boils down to is stories being showcased in different forms and ‘form follows function’.
This participatory werkshop invites you to explore ways in which art can be used to channel ideas from the sidelines into the mainstream, but also how protest and political organising can be elevated into an artform. We are living through an age where paradox is ever more obvious. The hurrier we go, the behinder we get. So we slow down to savour the process of artistic activism and find which media can support us in imagining and building radically different realities.
Time to werk the system, sisters.
The medium is still the message.
PANEL SESSION — DVORANA OHRID / 17:15 – 18:45 H
KATARINA PAVIĆ ~ moderator
MARIE LE SOURD ~ panelist
INGA REMETA ~ panelist
MIRELA TRAVAR ~ panelist
Advocacy in the field of participatory governance in culture
Context in which cultural workers operate is completely invisible and at the same time rather complex. Yet, more than just occasionally advocacy as a topic gets entangled in schematic and naive simplifications of dialoguing with the institutions without real ambitions to touch up on the intricacies that are the real deal such as the contentious political struggles and cultural wars, realistic timelines of events that sometimes extend over decades of hard work with little tangible results. Finally, potentially the most difficult question: how to ensure that we have not omitted important pieces of the puzzle while trying to push for change and thus contributing to the exacerbation of already dire conditions in which many in society live, including artists and cultural workers.