INTRODUCTION
Access to art for boys and girls is a right included in both article 44 of our constitution and articles 13 and 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This project aims to put into operation a circuit, at the state level, that develops stable and quality programming aimed at children and youth audiences. These programs will include the show exhibition, as well as training, support and advice so that mediation programs are promoted or implemented between their structures and the territory where they are located from a critical and transformative perspective.
“The public powers will promote and will protect access to culture, to which everyone has the right."
Article 44 of the Spanish Constitution.
Children and youth audiences, due to their special vulnerability, need cultural projects and policies that ensure their access to quality artistic proposals, being valued not for their future potential but for being the audiences of the present, putting them at the center of the planning and execution of the culture aimed at them and understanding their need to create their own spaces for the development of their identity.
Although it is obvious, it is still necessary to highlight the lack of possibilities and means for boys, girls and young people to access different programming. But, above all, there is a perceived lack of communication and mediation programs that bring them closer, link them and make them participate in the programming that is aimed at them.
Training and artistic experience is essential for the development of people. It has been demonstrated that investment through ambitious programs in this field produces benefits for the entire sector and society, forming individuals with greater sensitivity, self-knowledge, self-confidence and capacity for analysis, fostering empathy and promoting tolerance and equality.
Focusing on the development of children and youth, and on active participation in the cultural life of children and youth, is a commitment to the cultural formation of our society.
The creation of a stable circuit with a transformative perspective, as proposed, contributes to the development of the performing arts sector, expanding the programming of quality professional shows, but at the same time allowing and promoting relationships between agents, activities, actions and programs mediation and audience development work beyond the exhibition.
The ASSITEJ Circuit is a network that promotes and encourages the programming of quality proposals aimed at children and young people; that enhances territorial articulation at the state level and that generates synergies and relationships between the agents involved (programmers, creators, teachers, boys and girls) to contribute to the strengthening and global appreciation of the performing arts sector for children and youth audiences.
The importance of experience and artistic training in childhood and youth.
Article 44 of the Spanish Constitution states that “Public powers will promote and protect access to culture, to which everyone has the right”. Therefore, equal opportunities must be guaranteed without issues such as sex, race, age, place of birth, residence or socioeconomic situation being a reason to lack this right.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states:
Article 13
«The child will have the right to freedom of expression; That right shall include the freedom to seek, receive and disseminate information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, whether orally, in writing or in print, in artistic form or by any other means chosen by the child.
Article 31
«The States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to play and recreational activities appropriate to his or her age and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall provide appropriate opportunities, on equal terms, to participate in cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure life.
That children and young people have access to artistic experience and training is not only a right, but is also a fundamental aspect for the emotional and creative development of people and should be considered a strategic value due to its impact on the social development".
The situation of the performing arts sector for children and youth.
The performing arts for children and youth is the sector of the performing arts that is in a situation of greatest vulnerability, despite the fact that it is a strategic sector and of enormous importance for the development of the performing arts as a whole.
The low appreciation of proposals aimed at children and youth, the lack of articulation and the lack of ambitious public development programs in this area are some of the most notable problems.
The proposals aimed at children and young people in our country largely lack the necessary conditions for their full development and lack the appreciation and prestige that corresponds to them, usually being considered a minor artistic manifestation, even lacking artistic quality, despite that there are many professionals and agents who have been carrying out work determined by rigor and commitment to quality.
The Circuit aims to address some of the deficiencies and difficulties posed by the sector. ASSITEJ, as a state-wide and transversal cultural entity, has been collecting these needs of the different agents involved. Thus, this project aims to relate and address the needs raised by companies, spaces, associations, festivals, fairs, teachers, training centers, etc.
The precarious situation suffered by a large part of the performing arts sector is especially aggravated in the area of childhood and youth. The project aims to promote fairer forms of work and promote the consolidation of programs and projects in their territories.
ASSITEJ Spain.
ASSITEJ has been representing the Performing Arts for Children and Youth sector for more than 50 years, promoting their knowledge and carrying out actions and projects for their protection and development.
ASSITEJ is an international network present in more than 90 countries around the world whose main purpose is to work for the right of access to art for children and young people.
ASSITEJ unites theatres, organizations and individuals dedicated to theater for children and young people around the world. ASSITEJ is dedicated to the artistic, cultural and educational rights of children and young people throughout the earth and advocates on behalf of all children regardless of nationality, cultural identity, ability, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or religion.
ASSITEJ promotes the international exchange of practices and knowledge in order to foster collaboration between people involved in the performing arts for children and young people. ASSITEJ members are National Centers, Professional Networks and Individuals from around 100 countries around the world.
In recent years, ASSITEJ Spain has carried out a review of the lines of work and proposed an ambitious sectoral articulation plan that allows the integration of the different agents and entities involved, for the construction of a shared horizon towards which to move forward. jointly
Thanks to the experience acquired in the coordination of AUDACES. State Circuit of programming and after the successful first two editions of the ASSITEJ Circuit we embark on this third edition, addressing not only the school public and promoting the work of serving audiences as an aspect to work on in the programming, in addition to mediation and work audience development.
The ASSITEJ Circuit aims to create a stable, sustainable and quality circuit of performing arts for children and youth, promoting the creation of ambitious and quality programs that also contribute to the improvement of the professional sector.
- Strengthen the performing arts sector for children and youth and promote its visibility and appreciation.
- Raise awareness about the importance of programming aimed at children and youth.
- Reach areas with greater depopulation, facilitating the right of access to culture for boys and girls during their school hours.
- Strengthen audience development work specific to children and youth.
- Strengthen or encourage the development of the mediation project for performing spaces, focusing on the creation of the professional figure of the mediator.
- Promote that performing spaces are linked in a stable manner with the agents with whom they share territory.
- Link the different agents involved in programming aimed at children and youth, promoting joint actions between programmers and creators.
- Encourage programming that promotes company tours as a way to reduce costs and environmental impact.
Specific objectives:
- Develop programming in at least 5 autonomous communities.
- Link to a minimum of 7 spaces.
- Achieve the participation of at least 8 companies.
- Start collecting data from the sector in Spain (professionals, training centers,…)
- Generate resources on mediation practices, in addition to a repository of good practices.
The Performing Arts sector for children and youth is an enormously transversal sector that involves a great diversity of agents linked to the art and education of children and young people. The particularity of this audience determines the specificity of the work of the professionals who address them. Its special vulnerability and, above all, its transcendental importance as a strategic public, necessarily affects the joint development of the professional sector and, to a large extent, that of society as a whole. It is necessary to establish ambitious, integrative, and transversal measures that integrate the entire sector.
The ASSITEJ Circuit project aims to reach and relate to each other the diversity of agents that make up the Performing Arts sector for children and youth, trying to encourage encounters, reflection, dialogue and exchange:
- Companies and producers.
- Both public and private scenic spaces.
- Training centers.
- Schools.
- State and regional professional associations.
- Collectives and social agents.
The Circuit is aimed at the entire Spanish State and will try to encourage the development of programming for children and young people in those territories that lack it, as a way of favoring the entire sector and collaborating to guarantee access to art for boys and girls. .
It will be sought that the spaces present an ambitious program and it will be valued that this program includes mediation and audience development activities.
Professional companies from all over the national territory that meet the requirements established in the bases may participate.
¿BECAUSE?
If we start from the premise of understanding culture as a common good and that the Performing Arts have a transformative, emancipatory and activating potential for critical thinking, the work of mediation goes through create the necessary conditions forrto understand performing spaces and cultural infrastructuresor only in its architectural dimension, but as cultural agents of their environment. Social dynamization structures that promote your cultural activity through internships participatory and mutual listening based in logical relational multidirectional between the scenic spaces, the public, the and the professionals of the performing arts and the territory where they are located and their contexts (neighborhood, communities, toeducational people, associative fabric, other cultural agents, etc).
Mediation must be situated as a strategic and positioning line by cultural spaces, having a transversal and not marginal character, placing itself at the center of the dynamics of the institution not only at a programmatic level but also at an organizational and relational level.
¿SO THAT?
Mediation practices, detonated by the fact artistic, their processes and tools, us allow you to continue reformgranting the right of access to the Performing Arts of childhood and youth, approachus to an ideal, that of put childhood and youth at the center, addressing their access to culture based on equity reasons and equal opportunities and knowing and understanding its different realities, aroundyes and diversityis.
If a show is the key to entrytogives to new imaginaries and emotions, lace practices mediation are the way to strengthen long-term links between agents and connect culture with contexts. The combination of both dimensions is what allows us to understand the Arts scenic as tools of social transformation.
THE MEDIATOR IN THE PERFORMANCE SPACES
To establish scenarios in which the Performing Arts function as a tool of direct intervention and generation of stable links in the territory, it is essential to highlight the work of the cultural mediator.
This professional figure is characterized by promote the interrelation between agents of the cultural, social or educational fabric and to launch new views and layers to the artistic fact based on their knowledge of the context and the territories where it is located.
The mediator is committed to creative learning, introducing artistic thinking into her practices, which are based on the inevitable listening and collaboration between the agents involved and whose ultimate goal is social transformation.
Support in mediation
Being aware that this is an initiatory line of work that, in many cases, is in the process of development, it is very important to row together towards these new scenarios. It is essential, to meet the objectives of the Circuit that we promote, collaborative work and feedback between the performing spaces and the companies. a program of activities that yesand materializes in:
- Program of accompaniment in implementation of the line mediation of the equipment and its objectivesyes: diagnostic sessionsco and monitoring together and between spaces scenic and the companies selected.
- Located consultancies and methodological support.
- Professional meetings, think tanks and training on issues where we identify what is necessary put the focus
These activities tendwill take place throughout the year 2024 and will be provided the corresponding calendar. There will be professionals specialized in different areas who will be in charge of accompanying, guiding and helping to implement this work in the participating spaces.
The Circuit also seeks to generate a repository of resources. The registration and monitoring of these projects, the experiences and the materials obtained will serve as tools freely accessible as models of good practice and inspiring examples for the entire sector for, this way, continue the work beyond the Circuit.
We encourage the spaces and companies that are part of the ASSITEJ Circuit, to what commit to participate actively in both lines of work: mobility of shows and Practices of mediation.
Support in Audience Development
A working group will be created made up of different professionals with experience in the sector to detect and evaluate the various situations and generate documents and work tools that allow the dissemination and implementation of work systems adapted to children and young people.
Public attention working group.
- Design.
- Training.
- Diagnostic visits.
- Consulting.
The realization of the ASSITEJ CIRCUIT is in any case subject to the granting, by INAEM, of the aid intended for this purpose to ASSITEJ Spain.
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