Trans Europe Halles is a European network of cultural centers which was created in 1987 : they organize twice a year international meetings in different cities around Europe with different conferences and workshops.
This year, the meeting took place from the 16th to the 20th of october in Timisoara in Romania and the theme was « Grow ?! ».
The host organization was Ambasada, a multi-functional cultural and ressource center striving to appeal to both the independent cultural sector as well as the corporate sector as an alternative space for learning and inspiring employees.
16.10.19
Day of the departure : We met the people from the organization Maly Berlin in Trnava and people from the network of Slovak independant cultural spaces called Antena : they develop their activities aiming to support the position of independent cultural scene in the civic society.
We traveled for nine hours from Bratislava to Timisoara after spending few hours stuck in the trafic around Budapest. We finally arrived in our hotel and had a good night to recover from this long trip !
17.10.19
The first day in Timisoara permit us to have many surprises : we joined the general presentations of the trainers who took part of this camp and we discovered the amazing place of Ambasada situated in the heart of Timisoara.
The first workshop was : Maxamixen – an innovative laboratory for cultural equality with the trainers Hanna Olsson and Rayam Al Jazairi from Sweden.
The workshop was more precisely destinated to people who works with children but it was interesting to see how the trainer developed some basic activities to involve all different childs from different countries in a same place even if they have different languages. It was the opportunity to learn about bringing together and involving many different people around a same purpose despite of differences !
18.10.19
The second workshop we joined was called : Timisoara 2021 Capital of Culture – Multiplexity legacy (Tram Deport).
We met the director of that place and he explained us how the place will be transformed into a huge contemporary art center. The purpose of this workshop was to discuss and think about what to do and what not to do when you are at the beginning of a new place. It was interesting to listen the ideas of different participants about the things to avoid, and it was finally very positive to see how people were telling to never give up and always keep hope.
We also visited another cultural center near from this place which was an old tram deport transformed into a contemporary gallery !
Then, we joined the « Steering group », a meeting about Art Education with a group of organizations working on the project. We worked on application for erasmus+ project to be able to continue the activities, wich are – seminar once a year always at the different place, study visits for those who are working as a educators within the culture and arts, workshops about arts education at the TEH meetings. We were discussing the program about next seminar in Luxembourg, about some ideas for the meeting of 2021 which will take place in A4, and also about the workshop ideas for the next TEH meeting in Denmark.
19.10.19
The last day, we took part of the EastHub Meeting with Mykhailo Glubokyi from the Platform « IZOLYATSIA, Platform for cultural initiatives » which is based in Kiev.
It was the first meeting to introduce ourselves as a organisations who would like to be a part of this platform which connects the venues from the region of middle and east Europe.
IZOLYATSIA is a platform for research, discussion, and presentation of substantiated socio-political problems at differeng scales of the local and global context. The platform realises projects tht lie on the boundary between modern art and civil society, and works in the following areas : research, site-specific projects, exhibitions and residencies. The next meeting of the platform will take place in march 2020 in Kiev.
Finally, it was a good opportunity to present A4 and to listen at the presentations of each participant which came from a different country and different cultural places all around the middle and east Europe. The aim of this network is finally to discuss about many themes or problems together to be able to help each other and share different ideas and projects.
Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council