Link to the manifesto written on September 2nd: “Wake Up Call”

Closing the Gap ENCC

Roundtable

Hosted by TGR The Green Room in Cologne

Thursday the 31st of August – Saturday the 2nd of September 2023

Planting and Cultivating Support Systems for Stage Artists

Musicians, dancers and theater workers often work in fields demanding constant peak performance, many times under precarious conditions. The pandemic created and exposed fault lines, with many artists still navigating its impacts and suffering from increased anxiety and lack of confidence in a professionally stable future. Additionally, compounding geopolitical events are increasing artist displacement, with many highly trained artists entering the European culture markets under conditions of severe precarity.

This round table aims to foster a dialog between practitioners – artists, cultural operators, and medical/therapeutic experts specialized in working with stage artists – and policy makers and implementors – local and regional politicians, workers in local and regional cultural granting institutions, and representatives from healthcare and cultural trade organizations.

These diverse parties that influence the everyday working conditions and future prospects of stage artists will come together to discuss short- and long-term issues, with the aim of creating recommendations for artists’ health advocacy and paving the way towards the implementation of wider and deeper forms of support for stage artists.

Roundtable organisers:

Sara Turra: Coordinator, European Network of Cultural Centers (ENCC)

Piet Forger: member of the board of ENCC & expert for the ENCC Closing the Gap program

Heather O’Donnell: Founding Director of TGR The Green Room

Preliminary Schedule

Thursday, August 31st

19:00 - 22:00: Informal meeting of Core Team (hosts, international guests, speakers)

Friday, September 1st

9:00 -12:00: Study Visit to Wuppertal Opera for Core Team and other interested Guests, tour of Wuppertal Opera and talk with new intendant Dr. Rebekah Rota on supportive institutional structures for artists’ health.

14:30 – 17:30: Meeting with practitioners, experts and policy makers about “planting and cultivating support systems for stage artists”

Introductions:

• Presentation of ENCC CTG programme

• Presentation of the work of Green Room and the focus of the CTG Round table

• Presentations plenary

Working groups: discussing in smaller groups some dimensions of the topic / issue

Plenary with the results of the working groups and determining the main conclusions and next steps

18-20:00: Informal meeting, drinks

20-21:00: Concert with TGR GreenHaven Artists-in-Residence Polina Babinkova and Anton Mikhalevskii

Saturday, September 2nd

10-13:00 Meeting of Core Team to develop advocacy sheet for publication

The European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC) unites local, regional and national networks across the European Union, representing over 3,500 cultural centres in 27 countries.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.