Defining Fair International Cooperation

This year, IETM, the largest performing arts network in the world, publishes a Toolkit for international artistic and intercultural engagements, addressing inequality in international cultural projects. The aim is to sensitise those from more privileged contexts to ways in which such privilege may impact – whether consciously or unconsciously, positively or negatively – on their projects.

During this programme we will present and discuss the IETM toolkit. We will do so with an international panel of art professionals from Suriname, Morocco, Indonesia, and The Netherlands. Which solutions from the toolkit are useful to their practice? What are the pitfalls they have experienced? What change can be made; how can we define fair international practice?

By doing so we will take the Toolkit as a starting point to define necessary and possible tangible change in The Netherlands.

With:

• Sanaa El Younsi (Conservator Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech, Morocco)
• Annissa Gultom (Curator museum Tribuana Komunika, Indonesia)
• Stefanie Sewotaroeno (Poet and board member Bob Saridin Institute – Vereniging voor Herdenking Javaanse Immigratie, Suriname)
• Charlotte Riley (Lecturer in Twentieth-Century British History, University of Southampton, United Kingdom)
• Mike van Graan (Author of the IETM Toolkit)

Moderated by: Jörgen Tjon A Fong

Context

European artists and organisations benefit from a rich cultural climate, offering education, training, professional infrastructure and (compared to the rest of the world) relatively good working conditions. Funding schemes offer opportunities to collaborate with artists from outside Europe, sometimes as part of cultural diplomacy programmes and/or informed by historical links. These collaborations are however, influenced by structural inequalities and cultural differences.