Our project in Helsingborg constitutes a community driven cultural engine!
Back in February and March we collaborated with the Helsingborg City Theatre for the first time. Together, we staged the “Dynamic Dialogues” as a 2-day immersive Lab with a diverse range of participants contributing, thinking, sharing, challenging, presenting and even performing.
The Lab was so well received by the inhabitants, participants and the Theatre that it has now turned in to a Lab series, with the second took place last Friday the 18 November. It was fantastic being back with our friends amongst the Helsingborgers, many of whom participated again, while others were new to us and to the Dynamic Dialogues.
So what is the Dynamic Dialogues?
The Dynamic Dialogues Lab series is a creative participant-driven process, which aims straight at tangible cultural projects. Helsingborg City Theatre has initiated and is hosting the Dynamic Dialogues and has offered to act as a community hub for cultural change, yet the participants are in no way limited to thinking about projects at the Theatre.
What has happened so far?
At the first Dynamic Dialogues Lab, our greatest outcome was connecting the residents deeper across the City. Tangibly, the Theatre has rapidly initiated changes in terms of creating different kinds of content and taking substantial steps to engage the city community:
+ One wish from the community that surfaced during the Dynamic Dialogues this spring was to blur the borders between fine arts and folkloristic performances. It was discussed that the cultural institutions could open their stages to various performers and equally send out their professional performers into the community. In that regard, we proudly present the autumn programme of Helsingborg City Theatre, with one stage focused on external performers –from talks by the Open University, over an Open Stage, to smaller plays about football.
+ A second recommendation was to particularly focus the inclusion and outreach initiatives on youth and disadvantaged areas of the City. Also on that accord, pupils from 3 different schools in the periphery of Helsingborg have been working together on writing, creating and practicing for a musical in the Theatre. This great initiative is called Wag The City Hbg and is a collaboration between the Helsingborg City Theatre and the independent theatre group, Spiritus Mundi.
+ There are further plans ongoing with other parts of the cultural realm to deepen the Theatre’s role in the community and directly influence perceptions and behavior through theatre. We’ll be reporting as soon as we have news again on that front.
+ Last, but not least, it was suggested to create a community driven cultural body that would be able serve as the ears, eyes and fists in the cultural development of Helsingborg. We named this the Cultural Cabinet (in Swedish: Kulturting) and the second Dynamic Dialogues was dedicated the constitution of this Cultural Cabinet.
Dynamic Dialogues II: The Cultural Cabinet
The second in the Dynamic Dialogues series was on Friday, 18 November 2011, and the Theatre and Clear Village staged a test-run of how the Cultural Cabinet could be operating. The purpose of the Lab was to learn by doing, thereby build a concept of what the Cultural Cabinet could be and right at the end make the decision whether it should exist and in which form.
The kick-off questions were:
HOW does a Cultural Cabinet look?
HOW can the Cultural Cabinet help you?
HOW can Helsingborg City Theatre support the Cultural Cabinet?
The Dynamic Dialogues team lined up tasks and exercises, possible funding partners, spaces appropriate for experimentation and independent performers all to be discussed, strategised and planned by the Cultural Cabinet.
We first looked at the wider perspective of the Cultural Cabinet, through an exercise where council groups were formed, responsible for operations, community embedding, business plan, international relevance, education etc. Having shared and synthesised that, the Cultural Cabinet was faced with the reality of Helsingborg through independent agents presenting their projects and engaging in a Q&A session with the participants.
These examples of cultural players in Helsingborg were: Gustav Hoegmo with his play, Robert Lillhongawith his new film, Brigitta Killander from the Municipality’s Cultural Department, Jennifer Rahfeldt played songs from her latest album, the regeneration agency H+ presented their cultural initiatives, Niklas Uhrberg presented Jazz Helsingborg and Albin his Cabaret Candyclub.
Successively, the council groups were prompted to collaborate and create scenarios of how to operate, based on, but not limited to, the examples they had just seen. This was an afternoon of energetic intensity and weirdly wonderful chaos!
We concluded this Dynamic Dialogue, not only with the decision to constitute the Cultural Cabinet there and then, but also to step out into the public realm with four hours of cultural action as soon as the 17 December 2011!
We want to congratulate Helsingborg on its community driven Cultural Cabinet, wish everyone the best of luck with this new array of cultural initiatives and are looking immensely forward to the next Dynamic Dialogues in early spring of 2012.
