openHUB Europe developes Cultural Identity with European Partners

openHUB Europe is funded by the programm „CREATIVE EUROPE“ of the European Union.

The development of a common European cultural identity and sense of community is at the same time an exciting and a drawn-out process. openHUB Europe aims to contribute to a positive evolution of this process by offering a platform for sustainable collaborations on a European level in the realm of interdisciplinary contemporary arts. Besides the significant mobility and capacity building offers for artists, an important goal of openHUB Europe is dedicated to the professional development of cultural protagonists, such as curators and cultural managers, their organisations and the communities they are embedded in. The project unites medium and small sized art organisations from different cultural sectors and countries in Europe in order to stimulate an intensive and professional collaboration between them and to reinforce their operational capacity on international level.

Within openHUB Europe boundless cultural mobility is explored by means of multifaceted collective activities (Art events including exhibitions, performances, workshops, panel discussions and trainings as well as residencies in Poland, Belgium, Italy and Germany). openHUB Europe offers space to reflect on geographical, intellectual, social and economic contexts in order to better understand and practice collaborative processes within the European cultural field. Its main output is based on both, international and interdisciplinary art events including vast framework offers of workshops, residencies and public discussions. On this basis it builds up a platform dedicated to the exploration of various forms of collective activities and approaches. By bringing together larger and smaller organisations openHUB Europe explores tools for sustainable working structures in which also smaller initiatives are given the possibility to act on a European level.

Furthermore openHUB Europe aims to support artists with and without disabilities and cultural managers in their individual capacity building in the realm of inter- and transnational collaboration by involving experts from various domains and by a constant transfer of knowledge and experiences. openHUB Europe’s output reaches out to a diversified audience, especially focussing on the development of offers tailored to the needs of selected groups; not only on an artistic, abstract level, but also by combining it with citizen participation and social inclusion. openHUB Europe aims to reinforce art in its function as a medium – a medium to stimulate dialogues, to criticise and to reinvent society. These numerous goals of the project are seen as a whole – an alternative way to perceive and to understand what the role of contemporary arts activities nowadays is and will become in the future- as well as to reconsider the changing socio-economical realities, which inevitably influence the range of activities run by cultural organisations.

 

Five European Art Events

openHUB Europe as a two-years project 2015/2016 is composed of Five Art Events. Every parter organization in Poland, Belgium, Italy and Germany organizes one Art Event during the two-years project. At every Art Event all openHUB Europe activities like exhibitions, artist in residencies, workshops for audience, professional trainings for the partner organizations, pannels discussions and events will take place.

Each Art Event is dedicated to a defined theme which is developed collectively and includes various perspectives and approaches from all partners.

First Art Event “Food/Eat Art” in Dresden, Germany
at OSTRALE´015, 10.7. – 29.9.2015

Second Art Event “Food/Eat Art” in Milano, Italy
at an old Villa and the public Libary, 13.-29.10.2015

Third Art Event “Rural vs. Urban” in Aalst, Belgium
at the Galery space of “Netwerk / centre for contemporary arts”, 21.5.- 8.6. 2016

Fourth Art Event “Po.rozumienie, Über.einkommen, Under.standing” in Wroclaw, Poland
at the Galery space of “ArtBrut Gallery and Studio For Social & Cultural Inclusion” 2.-25.9. 2016

Fivth Art Evend “Po.rozumienie, Über.einkommen, Under.standing” at OSTRALE´016
at the OSTRALE´016, 1.7.-25.9. 2016

Each art event is dedicated to a defined theme, which is developed collectively and includes various perspectives and approaches from all partners.

The aim of this process is to combine and to mix different international points of view on significant themes in one single interdisciplinary Art event. During this collective process all partners (main as well as associated) are asked to suggest up to three art projects to be presented at each art event. There will not only be the exhibition of visual artists, but also performances by musicians, dancers and actors, lectures, workshops and panel discussions, making the event truly multidisciplinary. In order to distinguish it from traditional guest-curator models, this approach focus on collective processes of making decisions and explores possible ways of coproducing high-quality art events by the use of common online tools, like email, skype, google docs and other. The aim is not to compromise, but to find a common direction and to create results that go beyond accustomed forms of presentation. A mixture of components, including mutual exchange of ideas, common utopias and “Zeitgeist” are the motor of these collective curatorial and organisational processes to create Art events. Not only the partner organisations themselves or their representatives play an important role in the events, the particular environments of each partner will be taken under consideration in the preparation process of the events and activities, including not only the Art scene, but also the socio-economic environment.

The events won’t be detached from the everyday rhythm, but instead strongly integrated in local communities, which will be involved in an active way, in the form of workshops and alternative propositions of mediation of Arts. Furthermore, each partner will focus on a special audience, e.g. The World of Hope Association on general audience, Associazione Culturale Arci Equinozio on students and teenagers, Netwerk on people living in the countryside and people living in the city and at last OSTRALE that will reinforce the focus on recipients with disabilities.

All partners will support each other with experiences and knowledge related to these audience groups. Beside of activating and cultivating actions and presentations, public discussions will enable to learn from experts and to share experience of openHUB partners as well as to discuss issues and possibilities on theoretical level.

 

Selection process of participating artists

To assure a high-quality output of the project, artists participating in the art events and residencies will be selected by the
international curatorial team and approved by associated experts.

curatorial team
Andrea Hilger DE (visual arts and performance arts)
Barbara Rosenberg IT (contemporary music and theatre)
Alicja Grabarczyk, Barbara Idzikowska, Jacek Zachodny PL (art projects with persons with disabilities)
Annie Van Hoorick BL (director netwerk)