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th 5 editiON INTERNATIONALINTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY COMMUNITY ARTS FESTIVALFESTIVAL ICAFROTTERDAM 30.MARCH / 03.APRIL | 30.MARCH MINI-ICAF 2.DECEMBER / 03.APRIL ROTTERDAM | 2011 2011 Community Art PowerESSAYS FROM ICAF 2011 – FOR PETER AND ANNELIES – Community Art Power ESSAYS FROM ICAF 2011 ICAF Community, Art, Power Contents 06 19 Introduction Eugene van Erven 19 Come Together: A Report From the In-Between Alexander Roberts 28 Power and Community Arts Kevin Ryan 54 70 43 Random Combinations, 04 Deliberate Music Michael Romanyshyn 54 For Joy, Against Death: Community Theatre in Argentina Edith Scher 94 70 Peace Industry Propaganda or ‘Troubles Porn’? Matt Jennings and David Grant 85 Why I Stopped Making Peace Merlijn Twaalfhoven 140 94 Same Difference: Learning Through International Partnerships Neil Beddow 198 28 43 107 Memoria Cross-Over Arts: a German, Polish, Peruvian Collaboration Ulrich Hardt 129 85 Theatre For Everyone Maria Schejbal 140 A Field Ready to Leave Home: Notes From the ICAF seminar Jan Cohen-Cruz and Eugene van Erven 107 05 181 Debajehmujig Ron Berti with Joe Osawabine Contents 198 Something Is happening Here! 129 Big hART’s Ngapartji Ngapartji in Rotterdam Kerrie Schaefer 214 All In This Together: Art, Community and History’s Lessons François Matarasso 181 214 ICAF Community, Art, Power 06 Introduction Eugene van Erven 07 Introduction / Eugene van Erven ICAF Community, Art, Power he day before I sat down to write this intro- duction, we learned that the Netherlands Fund for Cultural Participation awarded the InternationalT Community Arts Festival (ICAF) a new grant to cover the next two years; this, while in the midst of severe budget cuts in the arts that have affected many of our colleagues. Despite the European economic crisis – or maybe because of it – we have been given the opportunity to organize a sixth edition of our festival in the early spring of 2014. This brings with it a huge responsibility. We have to demonstrate that we are indeed the interface between Dutch community arts and the rest of the world; that we are capable of productively bringing together some of the most inspiring ideas and practices in our field and can open them up to a wider audience. This book and its companion video are a first step in that direction. Those of you who are familiar with the reports of previous ICAFs will notice a marked change. Whereas the 08 earlier books were largely descriptive and impressionistic, this one consists of thirteen essays that cover a wide variety of topics in personalized, culturally specific styles. This choice grew from an urgent need, felt by both our visitors and ourselves, to reflect more deeply on our practices. It is also the result of a new festival component, the ICAF seminars, which consisted of a series of discussions that took place on four mornings, and which were facilitated by Professor Jan Cohen-Cruz from Syracuse University in the U.S.A. Together with a number of invited guests she explored the ‘power’ of community arts from different angles.1 While transcribing the video tapes of this sometimes heated conversation, it struck me that all these ideas would make a lot more sense if they were accompanied by in-depth back- ground pieces. 1. Earlier editions of the festival traditionally ended with a ‘final debate’ on Sundays. To my mind, these remained rather superficial because everyone wanted to have a say, which prevented deeper conversations. By inviting designated speakers into an inner circle I hoped to generate more profound discussions, at the risk of excluding an outer circle of largely muted spectators seated in the semi-dark. In his essay, Ron Berti criticizes this choice for which I, and not Jan Cohen-Cruz, am responsible. The first piece is an upbeat account of our festival by a young artist, curator and journalist from England, Alexander Roberts. He completed a traineeship with us at ICAF, creating podcasts for our website and writing an article for the British Totaltheatre magazine, which we reprint here. As you will notice, Alexander was particularly taken by the Murga, an anti-xenophobic activist performance practice in public space that originated many years ago in Argentina and before that, at the turn of the previous century, in Cádiz, Spain. He was equally impressed with the community dance work of Paloma Madrid, a Swedish choreographer who had come to Rotterdam to create a piece in someone’s apartment together with five novice dancers, including an 80-year-old woman. Thanks to Alexander Roberts’ promotion of this work, Paloma’s Dance for Apartment will now soon continue in Iceland. Paloma’s project, which she had developed with Bottkyrka Community Theatre in Stockholm, was one of five artist-in-residencies, another new ICAF feature intended to 09 introduce new community arts practices to the Netherlands. The other four included an exchange around musical theatre and video art between our company and Favela Força from Introduction / Rio de Janeiro, a collaboration between Imbali Visual Literacy from Johannesburg and the ‘Women’s Studios’ in Rotterdam (which resulted in fabric design and a fashion show), a street- corner visual arts intervention by Soft Touch Arts from Eugene van Erven Leicester (England) in one of the rougher neighbourhoods of Rotterdam, and a two-week project with at-risk youth facili- tated by Dance United Yorkshire. A documentary focusing on this last residency’s work in the Moerwijk neighbourhood in The Hague, is included as a bonus track on the DVD that accompanies this book. The second article explores key words like ‘power’ and ‘community’. Its author, Kevin Ryan, is one of the driving forces behind the East Midlands Participatory Arts Forum (EMPAF), a network organization in the UK that first visited us in 2008 and that re-appeared in 2011 with a twenty ICAF Community, Art, Power person delegation. Kevin, who directs Charnwood Arts in Loughborough, is also a seasoned visual artist. At ICAF, he offered a workshop in which festival visitors could serve as self-reporters and collectively create a book about the event. In his text, he argues in favour of the term ‘collaborator’, which he finds more fitting than ‘participant.’ He then turns to the many pitfalls and opportunities that community artists might experience when dealing with ‘the powers that be’. Like Kevin Ryan, Michael Romanyshyn is a veteran community artist. He is a musician and theatre maker who worked for many years with the legendary Bread & Puppet theatre in the U.S.A. This company, which was founded in 1963 by German sculptor and dancer Peter Schumann, has been an important influence on community arts worldwide, but particularly in the Americas and Europe. Romanyshyn’s highly personal tale tells the story of his coincidental connection with Archa Theatre in the Czech Republic and the amazing intercultural musical trip that resulted from it. 10 The Allstar Refúdžjí Band, which he directs, brought down the house on the opening night of our festival and later inspired a Dutch spin-off: Orchestre Partout. This band of asylum seekers, led by Ted van Leeuwen of 5eKwartier in Haarlem, won this year’s ‘Golden C’ award for best innovative community arts project in the Netherlands. Next in line is Edith Scher. At our festival, she and her partner, guitarist Daniel Mir, had conducted an inspiring interactive workshop in which she demonstrated the way she creates large scale scenes with choirs in her own neighbour- hood, Villa Crespo in Buenos Aires. In Rotterdam, Edith’s participants included members from the Stut community choir in Utrecht, the cast of our own Senior Citizens Revue as well as performers from the Community Company of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. I knew that Edith Scher was completing a book for the Argentinian National Theatre Institute, covering the rocky history of community theatre activities in her country, dating back to the days of the Videla dictatorship. The essay she wrote for this book, passionately and poetically captures the spirit and the unique qualities of this movement in which her company, Matemurga, played an important part. Immediately after the chapter on Argentina, Matt Jennings and David Grant guide us into the equally troubled history of Northern Ireland. Their chapter effectively demonstrates the value of accessible humanities research for the advance of community arts. They usefully explain terms like ‘kinaesthetic’ and ‘affect’ to explain the extraordinary power of the Theatre of Witness project by the Derry Playhouse, which they have followed closely. Matt and David argue that rather than exploitation of other people’s suffering, this initiative is valuable precisely because it does not neatly cover up tensions that continue to exist in Northern Ireland. The power of Theatre of Witness was made very clear to us in Rotterdam when, on the second day of ICAF, one of the original performers stepped out of the We Carried Your Secrets documentary we were screening, to act live on stage. It was one of the most memorable moments of 11 our festival. Another example of art for reconciliation is the Introduction / work of Dutch composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven. He has created musical pieces for novices, amateurs, and professionals on the wall that separates Israel and Palestine in Bethlehem and in the demilitarized zone of Nicosia, Cyprus. At our festival, Eugene van Erven we screened a documentary about the Cyprus project, called Echoes Across the Divide. On Saturday night we pro- grammed Merlijn’s experimental attempt to bridge the abyss between professional singers on stage and people in the auditorium of Zuidplein Theatre. In his contribution to this book, Merlijn looks back on his work in the Middle East and Cyprus, regarding it more as a matter of generating respect than of making peace, which to him has become an empty word.

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