Source book II: Weaving Spaces
SOURCE BOOK II:
WEAVING SPACES — How Regional Spaces for Culture Shape Narratives for (Local) Art, Culture and Cooperation?
~ WEAVING SPACES is the second in the series of three source books, published as part of REG.LAB project. It is an evidence-based publication gathering and articulating knowledge on innovative bottom-up models of creating spaces where diverse values and esthetics could be exercised and practised.
“This sourcebook gathers and articulates 6 in-depth experiences from 6 countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Notwithstanding differences, all those countries share a common recent history which took place within the framework of former Yugoslavia. Among many other concepts, this framework encompassed common cultural policies, which included a strong sense of the importance of growing and maintaining cultural centres (so-called Houses of Culture) as a crucial source of socialisation and cultural development. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, conservative trends in most of the succession states were reflected on the cultural policies of these states, erasing the symbols of the past system, along with either obliterating the “old cultural centres” or their utter neglect, thus slowly erasing the once vivid and important places of culture from the relevant cultural and social life of communities.
The new generations of cultural practitioners and people working in the communities in the region faced a severe obstacle of lack of space for their activities, including independent art productions. In contrast, these cultural “houses” that were once brimming with potential stood silently as a symbol of systemic neglect of culture. The new face of cultural infrastructure thus represented the widely accepted politics of pushing culture, especially independent culture, into the fringes while common spaces were privatised and sold to the highest bidder.
With this sourcebook, we attempted to provide an insight into the joint efforts of cultural practitioners across the region to find a solution to the problem pointing out how those often marginalised groups, were forced to be inventive in creating spaces of freedom where diverse values and esthetics could be exercised and practised. Not all of the struggles were successful. However, in line with the mission of this series of books we hope that all those experiences, successful and less successful ones, will resonate with the readers. We will hopefully inspire a continuation of the fight for a public cultural infrastructure that rests on the values of participative management, community engagement and inclusion.
This source book is for cultural practitioners by cultural practitioners.”
Marija Krnić & Mirela Travar
EDITOR Mirela Travar
EDITORIAL TEAM Iva Čukić, Ronald Panza, Karolina Babič, Vullnet Sanaja, Iskra Geshoska, Mirela Travar, Marija Krnić
RESEARCHER AND AUTHOR Leda Sutlović
COORDINATORS Marija Krnić, Miha Satler, Dejan Košćak
TRANSLATOR IN ALBANIAN Aurela Kadriu
TRANSLATOR IN MACEDONIAN Marija Jones
TRANSLATOR IN SERBIAN Sonja Krivokapić
TRANSLATOR IN SLOVENIAN Matjaž Zorec
PROOFREADER IN ENGLISH Sonja Krivokapić
PROOFREADER IN ALBANIAN Aurela Kadriu
PROOFREADER IN MACEDONIAN Marija Jones
PROOFREADER IN SERBIAN Sonja Krivokapić
PROOFREADER IN SLOVENIAN Matjaž Zorec
DESIGNER Petra Milički