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People Making Spaces conference / 18-21 of September 2015, Yaroslavl

Conference is a part of the international project «People Making Spaces» and the first part of the Russian project “New cultural centers.”

The key question of the project «People Making Spaces»: whether an independent cultural center in a Russian city is able to become a real power, forming social values, driving urban development, engaging citizens and creating a significant artistic product? How to make it work in a sustainable, attractive and effective manner?

In the frame of project seminars, which formed the main part of the conference, we have developed a scenario and strategies for the project “TEXTIL” in Yaroslavl. We offered solutions targeting problem areas discussed within the project groups sessions, exchanged ideas, experience in the local and international context.

The conference brought together people who create cultural centers in their cities, among them - Anders Olsson - Teatermaskinen project member (Sweden), Mathieu Vrijman - “Kultivator” project curator (Sweden), Evgeny Kulagin and Ivan Estegneev, Marusya Sokolnikova - organizers of “Stantsia” art place (Kostroma), Michael Priyemyshev, Denis Pritchin, Maria Morozova - “Kurbanistika” festival curators (Vologda), ) and our colleagues from Ivanovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Tver, Tula, St. Petersburg, Moscow.

The conference was supported by cultural and urban development experts from Sweden, Denmark and Russia: Pratik Vithlani, Tomas Bokstad, Yvone Rock (TYP Kulturkapital), Kerstin Bergendal (artist, curator), Svyat Murunov ( Applied Urbanistics Institute), Ekaterina Goldberg (independent curator), Daria Utkina (“Friendly city” project curator), Katrina Menshikova (independent curator). Their assistance was possible thanks to the Swedish Institute program and our cooperation with TYP Kulturkapital.

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Preparation plan and conference agenda

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Aspect Method

Comments

Forming a local agenda of the conference We ran over 10 meetings with the regional, city, district authorities, with the factory management, with the academic and cultural community representatives, NGO resource center and business representatives. As a result, an issue was sorted out and put in a form of questions for the project groups.

The issue should be matching the interests of TEXTIL platform and the interests of groups of people, who are potentially or yet interested in its work.

02 Aspect

Giving local issues a more universal status

Method

Collaborating with the experts, we have formed topics for the project groups. There was a title for each topic and 2-3 revealing questions.

Example: Subject: Participation based artistic practices contributing to the social and urban development.

Questions: 1 / How to plan and carry out long term cultural projects affecting urban and social development?

2 / How to motivate local artists to work with the social and urban issues?

3 / How to involve citizens in the artistic practices?

Comments

Don’t ignore the negotiation stage, don’t take time from the preliminary discussions, forming a common understanding of issues and topics, and joint debriefing after each phase of work.

This creates a common semantic field of the project.

Preparation plan and conference agenda

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Aspect Method

Building the conference format

4 days of the joint project work: Day 1 - project context immersion - curators of TEXTIL introduce the platform and its mission to the participants, the head of the Applied Urbanistics Institute Svyat Murunov makes the analysis of creative spaces in the Russian cities. A panel discussion with the regional and city authorities, the “Krasny Perekop” factory management and local activists takes place on the topic of the future vision of the city and the district, and what role can independent cultural centers play in shaping that future.

Day 2 - project groups sessions, where participants researching the questions: How to actualize the historical heritage for the citizens and tourists? How to legitimize the work of the independent cultural center for the authorities, business and citizens? How to carry out long term cultural projects influencing city and social development?

Day 3 - building of the 10 years strategy for TEXTIL; participants watched the platform TEXTIL at work and took part in the City weekend, had a chance to get in touch with visitors.

Day 4 - concluding and presenting the results of the project groups to the local authorities, business representatives and activists.

Comments

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Making event agenda, give enough space to organizers and participants to engage in informal communication and have free time.

Don’t fill up the agenda from morning to evening, better to achieve efficiency through concentrating on spot working .

Don’t be afraid to give up some of the points of the program, it’s better to hold another conference later than overstrain trying to fit all in one.

Aspect

Inviting local stakeholders to participate.

Method

Personal meetings beginning with open questions, instead of proposals, “What determines the agenda of the city / district today?”, “How do you see the future of the district?”, “What are the priorities for the city today?”, “How can we be helpful to the factory and the district? “. Receiving the information, we formulate a request and look for the answer during the conference, together defining the role of stakeholders in the event.

Comments

Instead of starting with a presentation of the project, that you want to invite a potential partner to, give attention to acquaintance itself and share priorities and main issues. Exchange contacts to support the meeting, and shortly after send an email - acknowledgment letter - with gratitude and additional supporting information and links.

05 Aspect Method

Inviting people from other regions to participate Sharing the information inside the network of the applied urbanistics centers. Invitating personally potentially interesting participants.

Preparation plan and conference agenda

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Aspect

Participants registration

Method

On-line google-form Include questions revealing the motivation of the participants and competences, they can share

Comments

07 Aspect

Participants experience presentation

Method

There was no traditional conference project presentations, participants shared their experience, achievements, failures and doubts inside the work of the project groups. Instead of discussing different study cases, we proposed to discuss the TEXTIL situation applying the knowledge and experience from other projects.

This gave more practical orientation to the conference, and a focus.

Comments

08 Aspect

Combining expertise

Method

Most of the project groups were led by a pair of experts, one from the Russian side and another from the European, combining experience.

Comments

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It allowed to set more capacious understanding of the local issues.

Aspect Method

Comments

Conference space preparation Transformation of the former Yaroslavl Big Manufactory cotton warehouse into the conference room.

Each day required individual furniture and equipment placement. During the sessions each project group had a big table.

Ending the work participants formed a large circle in the yard for collective sharing and reflection. Presentation of the results in a circle provided an atmosphere of equality.

Large slates placed on top of the tables enabled participants to put down comments on the fly and to create a collective map of ideas.

Flipchart sheets presenting materials were immediately placed on the walls, ensuring the access of anyone interested.

10 Aspect

Holding the conference

Method

Experts started the conference with a morning planning meeting and a small tour around the neighbourhood - acquaintances, checking the plan.

At the end of the project groups work we held a collective reflection, giving participants a chance to share their discoveries and learn about the results of the other groups.

During the panel discussion and the conference outcomes presentation we managed to create a dialogue platform for the authorities, business and local communities of Yaroslavl Region, to exchange opinions on the current issues, to discuss a vision for the future and to look for a common ground and values for cooperation.

Comments

The format of practical joint work and the time allotted for informal communication, enabled participants to do networking and to establish personal connections .

On the final debriefing many participants acknowledged the emotional support they gained and the recognition of their work valuable apart from the new knowledge.

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Aspect

Participants and experts feedback

Method

Google-form.

Collection of data and publishing the results in the form of individual web posts and infographics.

Comments

Better introduce it during the event and send it out immediately after the conference.

12 Aspect

Project’s products

Method

On-line journal with the outcome of the conference, handbook for people, who build already or dream to start a creative platform in a city.

Photoalbum, film with fragments of the interview.

Comments

Urbanistics Institute in Russia, sharing with the participants of the conference and project stakeholders.

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The main scenario for TEXTIL is associated with the historical heritage (TEXTIL is located in the historic district of Yaroslavl, on the territory of the cultural monument),

how to build cooperation with the district authorities, city and regional administration,

how to build interaction with the local activists and to attract local communities into the project,

how to motivate artists to work with the city issues and produce artwork, using cultural codes of the territory.

We have managed to draft a long-term development perspective, a plan including the vision of the territory development from all the stakeholders and simultaneously indicating the points of intersection, where the objectives of one team member are supported by the objectives of another. Within that plan the mission of TEXTIL began to take a clearer shape: the cultural center engaged in the life of the district and city. For our team it’s an important achievement that will help to determine the strategy and tactics of the fol-

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lowing work, help to rebuild the team and relationships with the partners, and to contour current issues for the project activities.

“Cultural and industrial heritage” group ( Thomas Bokstad and Katrina Menshikov) has developed a territory mapping tool defining a place and role of a cultural institution. The mind map of Krasny Perekop has been designed to illustrate the result of this approach, placing TEXTIL project with its connections and relationships.

“Stakeholders interaction” group (Pratik Vithlani and Daria Utkina) has proposed ways to monetize social and cultural capital (assets). The ways of interaction between different interest groups on the same urban territory, common themes and values were identified for TEXTIL project.

“Artistic practices contributing to the social and urban development” group (Kerstin Bergendal and Ekaterina Goldberg) has worked with a so called “timeline” - a project design tool, drawing stages of engagement for a cultural institutions (creative platform / project) in the life of a district and city. Experimenting with this approach the group drafted the long-term development plan for the TEXTIL cultural center on Krasny Perekop, Yaroslavl.

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Report about the internation conference

“Territory cultural codes and identity export” group (Svyat Murunov and Anastasia Yurchuk) has made an analysis of the urban environment, initiated cultural codes research, checking traces manifested in the environment or remained in the urban stories and legends. The team generated ideas to solve district problems and attempted to synthesise these ideas, elaborated the way of rethinking identified cultural codes of the territory, how to build locally sustainable economy solving these current problems and how to incorporate projects in a large cycle of building a creative cluster 3.0.

The result of work have come out as important 5 tools for starting a cultural center/ creative platform in a city: 1 Territory mind map, defining the role of a cultural center/ creative platform in the web of current, potential and necessary connections.

2 Social and cultural capital as a tool for putting together different project members, and a way of legitimizing an independent cultural center.

3 Timeline elaboration - long-term project perspectives based on public and personal objectives of the platform organizers.

4 Urban environment analysis and cultural codes identification, problem field, main issues and themes research in order to formulate a basis for future projects.

5 Model “Creative cluster 3.0” - connecting sociologists, artists, designers / architects, engineers / technologists through the curators, methodologists, producers in order to offer a new product that helps to develop a city and has an export potential.

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Expert’s and participant’s opinions

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Yulia Krivtsova, Sergey Kremnev, curators of the TEXTIL center

During and after the project «People Making Spaces» RACI has been continuing to operate an independent culture space with a biggest support from different stakeholders such as factory’s, municipal and regional government’s authorities, local business companies and creative communities. The conference allowed the RACI team to make their vision about a TEXTIl’s development and the mission about their participation in district and city urban processes more clear and strong.

The “People Making Spaces” project emphasized and put into public discussion’s field important points: what priorities for development Yaroslavl city and region has, what role in this process culture has and independent cultural agencies and spaces could play, how curators and entrepreneurs, authorities and artists could cooperate, how an artist could influence city conflicts and conduct a public dialogue?

The project created great opportunities for TEXTIL team to rethink their plan, regather members of the team, lot increased list of volunteers and partners in Yaroslavl, Russia and abroad.

Svyat Murunov, Anastasia Yurchuk, experts of the «People Making Spaces» conference

We remember a common reflection circle in the end of the first day - it was a very powerful event energetically. It allowed to share publicly impressions of the working groups, to say about little discoveries that appeared during the day, to give a smile, a gratitude. This can become an indispensable tool for a socio-cultural event or a project. Group brainstorming in Petropavlovsky park during the seminar “Cultural codes. Identity Export” from the Center of Applied Urbanistics confirmed the hypothesis that joint work and creativity are much more effective in the inspiring

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urban spaces. Incredibly beautiful autumn, light and color of the Krasny Perekop, the chance to fall on a carpet of maple leaves and enjoy the sky.

People, their activities and accumulated social capital are more important than physical space of a cultural center. Local cultural codes are the strongest source of inspiration and the rich resource for the cultural design. Projects / platforms in our cities more than ever before need curators, producers and methodologists, people with a wide social networks, system thinking and a more extensive vision of problems, trends, opportunities. Independent cultural centers have to learn to make money (and it’s the main query to date), including “export� in its activity frame - comprehensing and packing the results of their intellectual work: educational programs, manuals, schemes and charts, studies, etc.

Probably the project needs a person or a group of people who will be playing the intermediary role between locals and curators of the cultural center, who speaks the same simple language and easy to understand, for example someone living in the neighbourhood. Formats like joinery, homework club for school students, various kids clubs, locals meeting, environmental center will become a synthesis of a variety of interests. We inspired by the mobile TEXTIL idea: the cultural center may travel to the different parts of the city (for example, to the park).

We were able to make friends, to establish a high degree of trust and sympathy, to meet experts and participants from different cities, to exchange experiences and to collect registry of typical problems, common for independent socio-cultural projects in Russia. We have started to discuss the scenarios for TEXTIL, but formulation of the strategy is the question for the subsequent elaboration.

As part of Applied Urbanistics Center seminar, we tried to work out a model of a creative cluster of a new generation that solves specific urban problems, involves local residents and other urban parties in design and rethinking local cultural codes, makes them into hyperlocal and potentially interesting worldwide, builds an export oriented creative economy, offering complex intellectual products of its activities globally. Perhaps these elaboration will be included in future projects of TEXTIL. There is a suggestion to start the conference from a sort of a methodological experts council, also to include a general analysis of the environment, a generation of ideas and a projecting session, and some kind of a joint creative act in the urban area to finalise the conference. We feel grateful for interesting acquaintances, inspiring ideas and new formats of presence in an urban environment brought by the conference.

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Daria Utkina, expert of the «People Making Spaces» conference The main recollection is a working atmosphere. At first glance, it was a very informal approach, even relaxed, but in the same time structured and oriented to the maximum result. Indeed it was the atmosphere of mutual respect, acceptance and cooperation, oriented to see the good, the alive and what drives the project.

There is no universal scheme of creating a truly functioning cultural center.

You want to pay attention to the process, to the quality of interaction between the participants of the cultural process, whether goals and objectives of the center match the needs of its creators and its audience - these are the aspects that change in the process and you should reconsider them while the center progress. I remember Pratik Vithlani’s work about cultural capital (assets). At the session, he devoted time to introduce the theory and then assessed few real cases, suggested by participants. Conclusion that not all the centers with cultural activities possess cultural capital and have a potential for development, was a discovery for me.

The work of Kerstin Bergendal and Ekaterina Goldberg was just brilliant!

They helped to find TEXTIL its meanings and values, using the method of creating a mind map. A good example of how important is that to go deeper and to discover the motivation of each founder of the cultural center. At first, it seems like no clue between emotions and our practical tasks, right? But I witnessed with my own eyes the way it helps to identify realistic goals, to find a working model for their realization, to find new innovative ways of interaction with the audience of the cultural center - in tune with the local community and those, who invest their energy into the center. I noticed a taste of envy and sadness every time we talked about the planning horizon of the similar cultural projects in Sweden. They really can look forward into the distant future, not 3-5 years, that means “long-term” in Russia, but can make plans for 10-15 or even 25 years. This is a cycle of life of an entire generation.

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Katrina Menshikova, expert of the «People Making Spaces» conference

For me particularly important during the conference was a chance to meet representatives of the Russian creative platforms outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. I work more with foreign centers, and thanks to the conference I had an opportunity to meet those who work in the Russian regions. The most vivid and emotional experience was a Dance walking on the Krasny Perekop.

We had some time during the sessions to go outside the TEXTIL territory and to have a quick look around, but we didn’t really have a chance to initiate an easy going interaction with residents. The conference participants has always remained in the same space within their working group. Dance walking, small and improvised, was exactly that bridge between “us” and “them”: we were dancing in the park and across the school yard, on kids’ playgrounds and passing the roadway. They smiled, watched, walked behind us with children and their families, some followed us till the TEXTIL gate, just on time for the City weekend.

The conference allowed to discuss development strategies of TEXTIL and to exchange ideas and experience in the Russian and European context. Regarding the development of a common methodology, it’s necessary to have a separate expert session at the beginning to define more precisely the work context of the project groups, the form and content of results. Seminar topics, expertise areas, involvement degree of experts and participants were different. Free flowing uneven communication was supporting established contacts more, than new useful connections. I see the need to adjust the format of the conference: less sections with less participants, but involving the people from the different cities working for this kind of centers. This will create a common professional problem field with a chance to discuss a material of Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kostroma, Sweden and so on.

I strengthened my conviction that creation of an independent cultural center requires a certain quality of an urban environment, a critical mass of people willing to support, to engage, to share values. Development of the center should be done by people who want to live in the city and who are feeling its breath. Injecting an external short-term, even a super professional team from

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outside, will be less successful than an initiative grown out from the history and flavour of the place. I found a portrait of a professional curator / producer / methodologist quite interesting. It may be someone, who went away from home town to a city or abroad, but decided to come back. Motivation, training and support of a such professional could be realized in the framework of a special program, such as “Teach for all”, which carries a task to give a wider global context for those, who work locally in the regions. Next time it makes sense to discuss a creation of a professional network / union / alliance / umbrella organization for the Russian independent cultural centers, such as “Trans Europe Halles” (TEH).

Irina Freeway, participant of the «People Making Spaces» conference I think that the conference objectives were achieved by about 70%. On the one hand there is something happening in TEXTIL now more often than once in a month. There are relationships established with the other cities, and soon after the conference we had teams from Vologda and Kostroma visiting us. On the other hand there is a feeling that some pieces of work remained in a theory. For example, on the conference we talked a lot about the Petropavlovsky park, but did not offer practical solutions for it. There is nothing wrong about that - it is better to focus on stabilising the work at TEXTIL rather than waste the energy trying to cover all the district.

The main discovery for me is a model “Creative Cluster 3.0.” of Applied Urbanistics Center. I see how great is it not only for starting of a creative platform or a center, but also as the concept for binding together a city suffering from segmentation and fragmentation. For me, this is a way for uniting communities, but more structured, where there is a place for a city research and a production of a real product.

I recollect the people and ideas, everyone as a carrier of alive idea: Svyat with Creative Cluster 3.0, Kerstin with planning and social activism as an art, Mathieu with simple actions and life as an art. Another discovery is a “timeline” - live stories as an art. It is very difficult for practical application when it comes to one’s life, but it’s an interesting and inspiring experience. Perhaps contribution of participants was to help the TEXTIL team to determine priorities for development. I hope, I was able to convince that there is no need in regular lectures and master classes.

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Ekaterina Goldberg, expert of the «People Making Spaces» conference The conference succeeded to find the right balance between different participants: there were people from the TEXTIL community, motivated newcomers from Yaroslavl, experts and activists from other cities. So that brought us a very energetic working atmosphere. It was interesting to meet people, we could immediately start to develop projects seeing clearly who would implement them.

The experts from Sweden were so congruent and precisely relevant. I work with the foreign experts and quite often it’s frustrating for various reasons: misunderstanding of the Russian context, too specific experience that is not very suitable for our reality and so on. This time, experts have been chosen perfectly, communication with them was an inspiration as for Russian participants, as well as for the Russian experts. Also, they were very open and easily integrating ideas and proposals from Russian experts (which is rare), so we achieved a good cooperation and a very harmonious work. I liked the conference format with a focus on practical work. It was much more productive than others with lots of talking and little action.

I have got few lessons that I apply in my projects now : do not just enquire people about their ideas, better to ask about an idea they are willing to implement. In the end there are less ideas, but there is more ground underneath the chosen ones and there are real people with a sense of responsibility for the project.

I liked the format of the joint experts work for leading the session.

Right choice of people with a complementing experience makes it much more interesting than one person leading a working group. Creating of the timeline in the form offered by Kerstin Bergendal was a new interesting experience for me. I have not done it like that before, and now I want to try similar work with the participants of the Omsk project.

It seems to me, that we managed to formulate the key points for TEXTIL strategy. Of course, two days could not be sufficient to develop it fully, but the conference gave a strong impetus for further work of TEXTIL team. In that respect the conference completely fulfilled its purpose. In addition, it gave the motivation to the team members, as well as external people to continue being involved in the project. I’m still inspired by the conference, it has given a very good nourishment and support for the work.

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Pratik Vithlani, «People Making Spaces» conference expert

My main memory is the connection between history, heritage and contemporary art – that the value of this connection is so difficult for government, civil servants and business people to see or identify…. But when starting to visualise and materialise these connections it becomes so obvious that real value for society can be developed when you have traditions and history from a place, a heritage and legacy in the physical environment, artists and activists who have both talent and passion to apply their energy to that place.

I always thought that patience and humility are two virtues that I always try to bring to any project, and every time I learn new aspects of these two virtues – as I’ve done in Yaroslavl. The added dimension of patience for me is to reflect on the complex relations between the “sovjet mindset” and “Russian mindset” … first, that these are not the same and secondly, that understanding what either of these mindsets imply for new ideas, one needs a lot of patience. But once digging into these two mindsets – not avoiding them and feeling uncomfortable talking about history and identity – there are ways forward to talk about these topics. And once we did that, I felt increase humility towards local leadership, that there are complicated processes ongoing all the time and that one needs to be humble towards earlier efforts.

The best result is the new relations and connections that were established during the conference. That TEXTIL is invited to other parts of Russia sharing their experiences and that the conversations about the future of Yaroslavl and Krasny Perekop are populated with people who wants to develop the space.

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Kerstin Bergendal, «People Making Spaces» conference expert

Most of all I bring with great gratitude the discussions about the possible role of artists and artist run spaces, in an urban development characterized by the combination of rich history and low economy. What is it, that we as artists can bring into the equation? How can the pure action and the intuitively working free agency challenge a rational procedure of remounting what has fallen?

I felt that we concluded on behalf of TEXTIL, that any possible role would become even more possible than in most other contexts, including my own, precisely because of the combination of professions / roles involved in the organization behind the art space. There is more than one knowledge, and therefore more than one production at stake in TEXTIL I also felt that there is a clear resonance between the platform of TEXTIL and the urban area or society around it. There is anded for the platform, and this is expressed by a practical concrete support from others. This opens for an interesting collaborative dialogue, for which TEXTIL can be a “home” in Yaroslavl.

As results of the conference I appreciate friendships and the possibility of us in Sweden learning from TEXTIL. We hope you come and participate in a critical discussion of our projects.

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Andres Olsson, ÂŤPeople Making SpacesÂť conference participant

From the conference I bring back the feeling of resources and capacity. In this sense meaning the capacities and resources that exist within the core group of TEXTIL and of the spaces and the neighborhood. I bring back the large community of people gathered on the Sunday, people of all ages coming together sharing life and time. I bring back the images of a very strong cultural heritage area in transition.

I have learned the need for openness and attentiveness to the needs. I found myself realizing that a project of this size needs to be thought of again and again.The need to be constantly open to the specific wishes and needs from each of the partners, persons as well as organizations and stakeholders. And therefore, the need to create a map/a strategy that helps in the orientation of what to put priority to.

I appreciated the vivid and living dialogue that took place between the initiators of the conference and the stakeholders, local community, government agencies and society. I believe that such openness is very important and relevant to create a strong creative platform for a project as strong and powerful as TEXTIL. I am very happy to have had the opportunity to be a part of this experience that also helped me to re-think my own perspectives and to learn from the strong project of TEXTIL.

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Mathieu Vrijman, «People Making Spaces» conference participant

The main memory is the beauty of the space and the enorm potential when combined with the engagement of TEXTIL and the people surrounding TEXTIL. Also how touched I felt with the sincerity of your intentions to help the community around the factory with TEXTIL. I have learned how good is it to get external people involved to look at and discuss the space with independent eyes. How important is it to gain trust of the people involved so the development can go ahead more freely.

I appreciate the exchange of knowledge of Russian and Swedish cultural workers. A lot of new ideas for developing our own space by learning from the inspiring work of TEXTIL. The confirmation of the importance and strength of an independent social engaged organisations comes in a form of development of communities.The importance of such conference is to give the ability internationally share local engaged art.

Michael Priyemyshev, participant of the «People Making Spaces» conference I liked people speaking different languages around, friendly organizers, textile patterns in the space. I think it’s good to continue this topic on the other material. I did not like the fact that project groups from different sessions did not find the points of intersection, the opportunity to exchange technologies and to criticize each other on a stage of development of products and ideas.

The discovery I made that it is necessary to immerse into the process sincerely as much as possible.

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Conference organizers: autonomous non-profit organization “Regional Agency of Creative Initiatives” (Yaroslavl) TYP Kulturkapital (Stockholm)

TYP Kulturkapital / Stockholm kulturkapital.com TYP is an expert in culture management, where the partners bring senior experience in developing culture organisations and spaces. TYP is organised as a non-profit private limited shareholder company and was founded in March 2010. We believe that working with or supporting arts and culture is an investment in both the material and immaterial assets of a society. And we offer our experiences to independent organisations and public agencies who wish to develop their capacity, methods and relations to jointly develop their artistic and cultural assets. TYP was founded by Tomas Bokstad – Yvonne Rock – Pratik Vithlani, and have been engaged by independent culture organisations, Swedish culture institutions, governmental agencies in Sweden, and international culture NGO:s in Norway, Cuba and Kenya.

«TEXTIL» platform / Yaroslavl textil.in Textil is an independent cultural and social center and a public space running by the non-profit organisation “Regional Agency for Creative Initiatives“ and Textil company. It was founded in 2013 and started with the aim to build relationships and people networking before building the center. Textil as a platform for a civil dialogue, people engagement and artistic collaborations includes a program of regular events (city weekends) and initiates cultural projects dedicated to local historical traditions, cultural codes and future scenarios.

The conference took place thanks to the state financial support allocated as a grant according to the order of the President of the Russian Federation on the basis of an open competition held by the Society “Knowledge” of Russia, with a support of the grant program “Creative Force” of Swedish Institute ( Stockholm) and the grant of the Department of culture of Yaroslavl city administration.

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Editor Yulia Krivtsova Photo by Oleg Tokmakov Design &prepress by Sergei Kremnev lift-project@ya.ru textil.in

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