CAL XL launched
In January 2010, a team was formed at Vrede van Utrecht to develop a national version of the current Community Art Lab which focuses primarily on local, Utrecht-based projects. A process of consultation is underway where a wide range of individuals and organizations are being consulted within various cultural and social sectors about how best to develop the new national laboratory. In May 2010, a concrete action and project plan will be presented and the project has funding to run for the period 2010-2012.
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Klik hier om naar de Nederlandse website van het Community Art Lab te gaan.
Informatie over lopende projecten in Nederland vindt u op de Nederlandstalige community-art website. Op deze site leest u verslagen van internationale makers, critici en onderzoekers over onderzoek naar community art.
Today is my first day in the new position of guest web editor of the Community Art Lab’s English website. I have been warmly welcomed by the staff of the Vrede van Utrecht organisation and am now seated at my new desk. Through the window, if I lean back, I can see a tiny sliver of the Dom situating me firmly in the historic quarter of Utrecht.
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The Community Art Lab continues to document and analyze projects in Utrecht town and province and beyond. At the end of January we completed three years of documenting the ‘Living With Differences’ project. In February we finished our work with ‘The Story Kitchen’ in Haarlem. Over the next months we aim to complete reports on these projects. After the summer, we will be publishing a monograph and DVD on Living With Differences in collaboration with the Utrecht School of the Arts. Before the end of the year, we will also complete a book and DVD on other projects we have documented since 2006. The focus of our future documentation activities will be on projects developed within our new CAL-U workshop for young artists. We will also continue to collaborate closely with CAL-XL, which will assume a national coordinating role.
I am writing this article in November 2009, already with the consummate fact, now that the large painting at the corner of Luis Viale St. and Rojas St. is a reality. But at one time this was not anything yet. It didn’t even exist as an idea. It all started at the beginning of this year, when we, the members of Matemurga, the community-based theatre group from Villa Crespo (Buenos Aires), decided to embark on this mural project, a large surface that would poetically mirror the identity of a territory: that of our neighbourhood. It was an ambitious project, but possible. Bold, as most dreams are within the logic of community-based theatre, but achievable. Sure enough, it would be necessary to do plenty of research, to interview people, and to find a place where it could be painted. And above all, to create a powerful artistic object.
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On April 1, the Community Art Lab hosted a special meeting for researchers and funds. Over the past few years, several Dutch researchers have investigated the effects of community art projects. The work of Sandra Trienekens and of the Community Art Lab itself are examples, but also the ad-hoc evaluations of Wil Oud of the Kohnstamm Institute of the University of Amsterdam and of Peter Brouwer of Holland’s largest research institute, TNO.
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Like in many other countries around the world, carnival in the Netherlands is a cultural tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, and some say even to pagan rituals to celebrate the end of winter. Whatever the roots, it is a vibrant cultural practice that manifests itself in the Catholic areas of the southern provinces. In big cities like Maastricht, Roermond, Helmond, Breda, Tilburg, Bergen op Zoom and ’s Hertogenbosch carnaval has become a big urban street party attracting lots of people from the North as well. But particularly in small rural villages, the festivities bring together virtually the entire community. High point of carnaval is the parade in which small performances alternate with impressive oversize floats, the product of many months of collective grassroots art making. The creative processes start as early as August and are conducted in secret in farm barns until the final carnaval weekend, right before Lent. In the video below you can see an impression of one such parade in the small village of Alphen, located just a few kilometres above the Belgian border south of Tilburg. An interesting aspect of this parade is that in economic terms it is fully community-supported through local sponsorship from families, shops and small businesses.
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In the years 2006 and 2007 activities of the Community Art Lab (CAL) were mostly of an exploratory nature with only occasional in-depth research, such as in the community theatre productions ‘Maxima Comes’ and ‘In the Name of the Fathers’ and the YO Opera productions ‘Kuil’ and ‘Opera Flat 2′. In this period, we organized two festivals and two working conferences. In 2008 CAL shifted its attention more towards documentation, research and exchanging experiences among community artists and researchers. We continue to investigate community art with an eye to social effect, artistic quality and the ethics of collaboration between professional artists and community participants. We have also launched an online community art database, which for the time being is still in Dutch, but should give foreign visitors a global idea of the quantity and diversity of projects currently in progress in the Netherlands.
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