3 days of joy and great energy, an important beginning

The 3-day/4-night intensive workshop of the erasmus + Ready Steady Go! cultural mobility project, which took place from 15 to 19 April, was the first real meeting of the 14 participants and 4 representatives of the leader and the partner organisations. The event, hosted by Roberto Cimetta Fund, Ready Steady Go! leader organisation at the premises of the Institut français, included 6 intensive and tailor-made capacity building sessions and 3 cultural visits in the beautiful city of Palermo.

A diverse group of culture professionals and artists from Serbia, Italy, Spain, Greece, Kosovo, Croatia, Tunisia, Egypt,, Greece,, Tunisia and Morocco , representing various disciplines -culture education, circus, photography, festivals, visual and performing arts -shared cases from their reality, exploring fears and expectations, common ground in terms of values and challenges, questions, hesitations and solutions in the process of artistic creation. Critical approaches were welcomed, and from the very first moment, they shaped the safe environment where participants expressed themselves freely and addressed delicate issues in a frank and caring manner.

It was a manifestation of the importance of meeting physically “in the field” and a reminder that culture, fresh ideas and innovative projects emerge where people look each other in the eye, collaborate methodically and move forward step by step to make their dreams real.

The workshops included three session modules dedicated to the exploration of mobility as a social fact, the ecosystem in which mobility takes place and the development of participants’ mobility projects.

A special session was about green mobility and how social inequalities, particularly between remote areas, challenge the sustainability target. As the project is focused on remote areas, namely islands and decentralized cities of medium size population, everybody had a story to share about their trip to Palermo and how access to mobility is challenging for them to develop their career.

Workshop’s objectives

The workshop aimed to explore mobility and delve into mobility issues today. Mobility is a social fact, a project and an essential component of artists and culture professionals’ lives, thus it is interwoven with many social, political and economic variables, without losing its universal and fundamental character.

The workshop also provided an intensive opportunity to get to know a diversity of remote areas, the opportunities and challenges they offer to the careers of artists and culture operators, with case studies from the cultural and artistic Sicilian scene. Finally, it offered support to a new generation of culture operators and creators to develop their project, focused on what they have rather than what they need, which usually is more obvious.

Cultural visits

Two cultural visits to the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa and the city of Palermo concluded each day’s programme, provinding participants with moments of inspiration, feeding them with thoughts and ideas that could be further elaborated during the sessions.

The tour in the Cantineri led by Judith Testault, head of the Institute Palermo, co-host of the meeting, highlighted significant cases of decentralized cultural activity. Today, the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa is a place of production of cultural value born from an experimental model of urban and human regeneration. It has succeeded in creating a cultural system characterized by a high rate of hybridization between the different functions by hosting 32 active culture spaces.

The team had the opportunity to explore Palermo’s palimpsest through a walk in the city, organised in partnership with the project “Open Paesaggi” and guided by architect Lucia Pierro. The tour passed by central squares and monuments, important moments of Byzantine, Islamic and Western/Catholic/Italian architecture and history of the city, interacting with the “Église”, a photo collective located in the city center and ending up at the Puppet Museum Antonio Pasqualino.

At the end of the meeting, participants had the opportunity to have a private meeting with 10 local artists for direct questions and answers and mentoring. Sabino Civilleri, Giuseppe Provenzano, Lina Prosa, Simona Scaduto, Frida Morrone, Valentina Mantarali, Letizia Gullo, Alberto Biondo, Clelia Bartoli, Lucia Pierro candidly shared their practices, recommendations, tools and secrets in a module that proved to be among the favorites sessions of the meeting generally.

Next meeting in Elefsina

The participants left Palermo with new alliances. Moreover, they developed commitment to their own projects, and strategically planned their next steps, shaping a roadmap of their projects for the next three months until our next and final meeting, next October in Elefsina.

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Ready Steady Go! is a 10 months learning expedition/journey that welcomes 14 artists and cultural professionals from the Mediterranean.