250 artists, 170 major works of art, 2,500 cultural organization representatives, 400 cultural stakeholders across two continents, and more than 30 countries work between June 2022 and July 2026 to develop an inclusive, sustainable, and participatory framework of cooperation between Europe and Africa.
‘Deconfining Arts, Culture, and Policies in Europe and Africa’, is aimed at creating new and equal cultural ties between Europe and Africa by developing a sustainable reference model of cooperation that will later be extended to other regions of the world too. Building on the close collaboration between the two continents and the integration of their Capitals of Culture programmes, this project brings together cultural practitioners, policymakers, performing and media/visual artists, in-field universities, and audiences from both continents to explore and demonstrate new ways of intercontinental artistic and cultural (policy) cooperation; and to contribute to a better understanding of confinement patterns from different points of view in an intercontinental perspective. All this in order to break free from paternalistic and colonial views in favor of a strong participatory attitude and provide better access and information for intercontinental mobility and transnational co-creation.
The project is designed and led by 12 partners from 11 European and one African country:
On the Move (Belgium), Croatian National Theatre „Ivan Zajc“ Rijeka (Croatia), National Kaunas Drama Theatre (Lithuania), Bodø 2024 European Capital of Culture (Norway), Kulturhauptstadt Bad Ischl – Salzkammergut 2024 (Austria), Art Transparent (Poland), Institute for Transmedia Design (Slovenia), Goethe Institut Madrid (Spain), Culture Funding Watch (Tunesia), The Arts and Theatre Institute (Czech Republic) und Pro Prograssione (Hungary).
Associated partner organizations are: Africapitales (African Capital of Culture, panafrican), Les Récréâtrales (Burkina Faso), the Opera Village Africa (Burkina Faso), the Festival sur le Niger (Mali), the Rwanda Arts Initiative (Rwanda), the National Theater of Dakar (Senegal), the Raw Material Company (Senegal), the Nafasi Art Space (Tanzania), the Nyege Nyege Festival (Uganda), and the Museum of Women’s History (Zambia).
The project is led by the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute.
The project website is https://deconfining.eu
This project is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
