Finally, performing artists can tour across borders again! Perform Europe proposes ideas to do it in a fairer way

How can you continue your collaborations, when international funding is always project-based? Why is information about international mobility more accessible in cultural capitals than in rural areas? And how do we deal with the fact that more than 50% of national and regional funding schemes for touring of the performing arts is concentrated in Western and Northern Europe? The research in the publication Perform Europe Insights: Sustainability through innovation, provides us with the facts: the current system of touring and distribution support in Europe can become more balanced, sustainable and inclusive.

If you look at actual artistic work by performing artists, you can feel a strong connection to society and an urgency for change radiating from all kinds of European stages. For example, you can see many performances around the topic of climate crisis. The current funding and cultural policies, however, do not stimulate and support the growing environmental awareness in the sector to be put in practice. The same goes for artists awareness around the exclusion of minorities, mental health care, social inequity and much more. Perform Europe maps multiple issues related to artistic, human, economic, social and environmental sustainability of the European cross-border distribution system. These are the disconnections of our support systems that we need to change, to make a fairer world not only the topic of our art but the conditions for it.

This first report concludes with a vision of how a structured and continuous cross-border support scheme can help address the existing gaps and generate a lasting impact. The next step will be involving performing artists and producers through an open call. 508 candidates were selected in the first round and are now going through a match-making process to find co-creating partnerships. Sixteen Netherlands-based candidates are participating in the second round. Interestingly enough, 48% of the candidates are based in Western and Northern Europe.

DutchCulture will follow the process of Perform Europe, Reshaping the Art World and other transnational research projects, on a journey towards fairer international cultural collaboration. In the coming years, we will programme about Fair international cultural collaboration and the interconnected diversity of issues concerned, by also putting a spotlight on one topic at a time. In 2021, we have a spotlight on Fair Mobility.

Download the full report

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Perform Europe is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and co-managed by a consortium of five organisations: IETM – International network for contemporary performing arts, the European Festivals Association (EFA), Circostrada, EDN – European Dancehouse Network and IDEA Consult.