NEW THEATRE INSTITUTE OF LATVIA

contemporary performing arts in Latvia and abroad

Go straight to ACT REFLECTIVE REPORT

New Theatre Institute of Latvia for four years has been one of the partners of a Creative Europe project ACT: Art, Climate, Transition! We have managed to send Latvian artists to three Summerlabs across the Europe – Krišjānis Elviks in Zagreb Summerlab,  Iveta Pole in Ljubljana Summerlab, Oskars Moore in Skopje Summerlab, as well as organize one in Latvia, in our magical peatlands.

We have held three artist residencies that resulted in new researches, approaches and performances. Artist Voldemārs Johansons created his performance Attractors Listening Room to be premiered in International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus” in year 2021, Jānis Balodis together with Argentinian artist Nahuel Cano premiered their performance The Last Night of the Deer in year 2022 while Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelyte worked on her new project Mutes in year 2023.

We have had a virtual Forest School bringing together scientists, artists and environmental activists around the Nordic countries to travel digitally across various ecosystems resulting in six recorded sessions.

We have had multiple workshops, lectures and summer schools inspiring new and already established artists, students, community members to spend some quality time together and learn and inspire from one another. In some instances it resulted in new performative events, in some as articles or visual works. Sometimes it just ended with some new created communities and friendships.

And of course – performances! Performances in the form of a fashion show, in a form of a dinner tasting, in a form of an audio walk in a park, in a form of asking questions, being silent, seeing the queen bee in action and more and more.

We want to thank all of the partners and artists and everyone involved in the project throughout these four remarkable years for your inspiration, questioning, courage and patience while trying to achieve what we wanted from the very get-go – art, that is encouraging us to ACT. And we think that this research proves that we have. Find it here and share – ACT REFLECTIVE REPORT

What is ACT?

ACT is a European cooperation project on ecology, climate change and social transition. In an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and growing inequalities we join our forces in a project on hope: connecting broad perspectives with specific, localised possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we ACT.

ACT: Art, Climate, Transition appears as a third evolutionary phase of Imagine 2020, which started in 2010 as a cooperation of arts organisations, raising awareness in the cultural field on climate change. Confronted with the ongoing climate crisis, sheer imagination is not enough. ACT is urgent and topical in addressing ecology and climate change, deeply rooted and entwined in a political economy that favours inequality and exhaustion. There is no sustainable transition without climate justice.
ACT implemented 397 actions and events in the field of contemporary arts, ecology and a fair transition including: coproductions, exhibitions, festivals, knowledge sharing, performances, publishing, and participatory projects with local communities.

Partners and story

New Theatre Institute of Latvia
Artsadmin, London United Kingdom
Bunker, Ljubljana Slovenia
COAL, Paris France
Commongrounds / Arie Lengkeek, Rotterdam The Netherlands
Culturgest, Lisbon Portugal
Domino, Zagreb Croatia
Kaaitheater, Brussels Belgium
Kampnagel, Hamburg Germany
Lokomotiva, Skopje North Macedonia
The Change Management Research Group, The Hague The Netherlands
Theater Rotterdam, Rotterdam The Netherlands

ACT was developed with a multidisciplinary approach – performing and visual arts, discourse programmes, community-based activities, among others.
The rooting & circulating WP (work package) included activities engaging with specific qualities, geographies, values and realities of our localities, while also feeding European exchange. This WP included main items of our shared work. With Collection Europe, collegially selected arts projects were brought to life. Relay lectures conceived and organised in a collaborative manner between partners of ACT. A series of 4 international Summer Labs for artists working around a specific theme, in close interaction with local communities and civil society organisations.

“ACT: Art. Climate. Transition” is co-financed by the EU’s programme “Creative Europe”. ACT is a European cooperation project on ecology, climate change and social transition. In an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and growing inequalities we join our forces in a project on hope: connecting broad perspectives with specific, localised possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. ACT is a project initiated by 10 cultural operators from 10 European countries, working in the field of performing and visual arts. More about the project read at artclimatetransition.eu.

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