Daniel Blanga-Gubbay. Dealing with Demographic and Migration Problems as part of The Diasporic Schools Project at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts Festival workshop

Can an institution or a festival temporarily become a school? Try to imagine the school of the future: What will its class schedule be like? Who will be its students?

The workshop by Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, the Artistic Director of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts Contemporary Arts Festival, is dedicated to the methods of supporting and presenting to the public contemporary artists who create new schools and experimental educational platforms. The roundtable will start with discussing The Diasporic School project launched in 2020 for the Kunstenfestivaldesarts Contemporary Arts Festival. The Diasporic School ordered works from Bouchra Khalili, Otobong Nkanga, and Sandrine Honliasso, Christian Nyampeta, Samah Hijawi, and Reem Shilleh, as well as Yael Bartana; therefore, it can be considered a kind of training courses. Each course brings together a group of participants related to a specific issue, although these people can be anywhere in the world. This is a kind of experiment in the joint production of knowledge and its remote transmission.

The workshop answers to four questions: How to conduct research and to curate educational art projects? How to create new art forms? How to cooperate with local communities and associations, taking into account the project specifics? The concept and results of The Diasporic School will be the starting point for further collective discussions and answers to questions of interest to its participants.

About the Program:

The Theater and Museum. Social Mission program is part of the large-scaled public program of the Theatrocracy. Catherine II and Opera exhibition and festival. The Program is aimed at developing practical curatorial, producer, and administrative skills to implement cultural projects with social topics.

The Theater and Museum. Social Mission professional education program represents the best world practice in implementing projects with social topics, including projects in the field of ecology, education, combatting social injustice, and demography. It will introduce participants to successful cooperation strategies and implemented projects.

The Program is addressed to professionals of museums, theaters, and other cultural institutions, government bodies, other organizations (including commercial ones), as well as to independent curators, producers, and artists implementing cultural projects and interested in developing a social agenda under cultural projects.

Curators of the Professional Educational Program: Anton Flyorov and Maria Beylina (Theater Institute).

Russian experts, teachers of the Program:

Valentina Ostankovich, a theater artist.
In 2012, she graduated from the experimental course of D.A. Krymov and E.B. Kamenkovich at the State Institute of Theater Arts (GITIS). Artist of the Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory, author of scenography and costumes for the performances of the Children’s Musical Theater named after N.I. Sats, the Pyotr Fomenko’s Workshop, The Theater of Nations, The Moscow A.S. Pushkin Drama Theater, the Praktika Theater, etc. Winner of the Golden Mask award. Since 2014, she has been teaching at the GITIS Directing Department; she taught at the Creative Start course at the British Higher School of Design.

Nadezhda Konoreva, Deputy Director of the Vsevolod Meyerhold Center.
Founder and Director of the Kultproekt Creative Association. In different years, she was a producer of such festivals as Golden Mask, New Drama, CinemaTheater.doc, and Easter Festival.