NEWSLETTER This is the last issue of the Artycling newsletter. In the last three years we have quarterly informed you about the activities done within this amazing initiative. We have been able to transform trash into art! To give visibility to artists who have difficulties due to several reasons. To put together the efforts of different people in different countries thus helping artists to earn a living from art. On the one hand we are sad because this is a good-bye but, on the other hand, we are happy to have sown this seed that will keep on growing. We invite you to continue visiting our website (please visit the on-line shop and choose any of the wonderful works you will find there) and our Facebook page to be informed about one of our last activities that is taking place right now: the International Exhibition in PĂŠcs, Hungary.
Thanks for your support during the last three years!
Photo group of the Arcyclers in Toro (Spain)
The project has been funded with support from the European Union. This communication reflects the author’ views only and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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SOME OF THE MAIN RESULTS OF THE ARTCYCLING PROJECT IN SPAIN, HUNGARY AND DENMARK FEEDBACK FROM SPANISH ARTCYCLERS Artcycling has been a turning point at INTRAS Foundation. We have found a new way to express ourselves, to be free just for a moment. We have rediscovered art! Some of the people attending to the two day centers for people with psychic discomfort that INTRAS runs in Valladolid and Toro (a village in the Spanish province of Zamora) have artistic concerns, but they never had the chance to perform arts. Artcycling gave them a great opportunity to develop themselves and find a new hobby and a potential way to earn a living or at least to complement their incomes. The artcyclers were trained during several workshops with craftsmen, visited art exhibitions, received training about IT design programs or about how to be an art entrepreneur, they wrote a common blog about their experience, organized and participated in two local art exhibitions to show the works they created, etc. The results in terms of soft skills development and general wellbeing were so good that we decided to replicate the training course in our day center in Valladolid, which originally was not planned. We wanted to open the Artcycling work to as many of our clients as possible and thus help them to express themselves and continue working in their recovery process. Feedback from our artcyclers is very positive, they enjoyed the experience and want to keep on working on arts and upcycling art. From INTRAS, we will continue supporting them to realize their dreams.
National showroom in Toro, Spain on 15th February 2018
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FEEDBACK FROM HUNGARIAN ARTCYCLERS Unfortunately it is time to say goodbye. We feel very sorry, because the past three years have given a lot to the Artcyclers of Retextil Foundation. We have learnt many handcraft techniques and developed our knowledge-base. We have dealt with IT, blogging, online representational forms, and even knowledge about how to flourish your own business. We have gained a lot of experiences. Thank you Artcycling for this great opportunity! Now it is the time to sum up, but also to make future plans. How will the numerous techniques (like basket weaving, leatherwork, plastic recycling, bookbinding, just to name a few) be used in the Artcyclers’ life or in the Retextil workshop? So many exciting questions! But until the answers come, we had one final task: to organize the Artcycling International Exhibition! Retextil Foundation got the chance to showcase the works of the three partners’ organizations. There was a frantic preparation weeks before the event in the workshop. Artcyclers have finished and finalized their own, as well as collective works, like the crocheted map of Pécs. After we have seen the exhibition space, for two weeks, four people have helped Thiesz Angéla, the art director at Retextil Foundation. We have sent an invitation to this wonderful event to our relatives, friends, and everyone we know to come to Reggeli in Pécs, to see what we have created!
International exhibition in Pécs, Hungary, in April 2018
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FEEDBACK FROM DANISH ARTCYCLERS
When we embarked on the Artcycling adventure 3 years ago, we had behind us almost ten years of working with art, culture and sustainability issues. We had followed and worked with some of the greatest artists in the eco-art field, and we had participated in the strategic planning of the field, on local, Nordic, European, and even globally oriented level. Taking up the challenge of working on a micro level with individual artists or small groups, meeting their more personal issues and difficulties, was a totally different story for us. We had worked with creative entrepreneurship for people with a long history of being outside the employment market, and we were able to bring in some of the approaches from that work. But the real challenge resided elsewhere. It was actually about bringing the doubt, the self-criticism, and the obstacles, into the open, and making the collective stand up to describing both their difficulties and the visions and hopes they have for themselves and their artwork. The Danish cultural setting is one in which lack of fast or clear success is mostly individualized. If you don’t break through, you deal with it on your own or with your friends; there are no structures or institutions that support the cultural entrepreneur, regardless of whether or not they suffer from specific disadvantages or not, or if they have this or that attitude to recycling or sustainability. Today, we have a broad and rather loosely organized collective or artists that have worked with the Artcycling agenda of sustainability, positive values, and re/upcycling materials. We work with many different materials and techniques and have very different ambitions, ages, ethnicities, and difficulties. The group is different from the ones in the other countries, because the artists are not physically mentally disabled. The members of our group have faced difficulties such as diseases or more social difficulties, and only some of them would consider themselves marginalized in any particular, objective manner. Which goes again to illustrate the point above on the individualization of challenges.
International exhibition in PĂŠcs, Hungary, in April 2018
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Over the past year and a half, the collective came together in reciprocal inspiration and co-creation, and in the making of an exhibition, “The Eternal Return of Matter”, which was held in the centre of Copenhagen in January, 2018. Over this period, our group grew and diminished; some made it on and wanted to stand on their own feet, others arrived or crossed our path and became part of our journey for a while. Thus, we held preparing workshops and micro-exhibitions, in the artistic collective space of “Floating City” (Flydende By) in an old hangar next to a recycling station, a beautiful project in collaboration with the municipality of Copenhagen – and twice with the Repair Café people in two different neighbourhoods in the city. The former led to the arrival of an artist like Christoph Ehrlich, whose works pick up cutlery from kitchens of restaurants, machine parts, and cables, to mention some – to make creatures with animal features and strong identities.
Poster for the national exhibition in Copenhagen by Helle Sveistrup Carlsen, 2017
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In the meantime, we managed to set up a new platform that will be available to all the artcyclers in Denmark as well as the other countries, and will evolve to be more than just a course site, lay the grounds of new communities and sharing experiences (http://creativeentrepreneurs.dk). While carrying on with these preparations and telling our stories online and in small exhibitions, we also prepared for the international exhibition in Pécs this year in April. This latest experience was yet another meeting with a collective in a country with whom every European is closely connected; yet also a place that faces political and expression oriented challenges that are different from ours in the Nordic countries. But important to share nonetheless, as we do not cease to learn from these encounters. We are sad to say “Farvel” to the Artcycling project, but we are certain than many flowers and orchards will grow from this collaboration in the future.
Picture of bird, Freedom Fighter, Christoph Ehrlich, 2017Carlsen, 2017
THANK YOU!
For further information, please contact us via e-mail: lmd@intras.es You can find us on Facebook as well: https://www.facebook.com/Artcycling-1072951626083052/
www.artcycling.org
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.