Airan Berg and ARTopia in Brussels

[Ivona Pelajic]

About ARTopia

Because of society’s rapid change and its increasing complexity, world is changing faster and faster. Considering that, how should education for all children be tailored, in order to benefit their development in the best possible way? On the 15^th of May in the heart of Brussels, in Beursschouwburg, a group of art education experts tried to answer this question. For this occasion Lasso and Vitamine C had co organized an artistic, utopian, yet completely realistic event: ARTopia. ARTopia hosted a well-known theatre director Airan Berg and a musician Tuur Florizoone. Artists and professionals involved with “Move It” project participated as well in this evening event.

©Lisanne Valgaerts

About Airan Berg and his work

Airan Berg is an internationally renowned artist and theatre director with years of experience in community art projects in various countries. Airan coached art educational projects in schools in Flandres, Wallonia, The Netherlands, Germany and Austria. He has accumulated a lot of experience in cultural and arts education projects. As the director of the Vienna Schauspielhaus, he was one of the initiators of the project Hunger auf Kunst und Kultur. While working on the “Linz Cultural Capital of Europe in 2009” project, he developed the project “I Like to Move it Move it” where over 1000 Austrian schoolchildren and their teachers joined in an active way through workshops on contemporary art. He also prepared and held similar schools project for schools in Maastricht, Hasselt and Liege in Belgium. In the course of these projects, Berg built an extensive international network of artists.

About Move It

Move It is an international project coordinated by Airan Berg. It has been organized in six Dutch-speaking primary and secondary schools Brussels’ schools. Through “Move It” students are developing their creativity to help them deal with everyday social problems and also to get involved with contemporary art. Three teams consisting of three international and Flemish artists coach both students and teachers during eight weeks through creative workshops. This project places creativity in the centre and it consists of a team of three artists that work together with pupils for eight weeks on each project. The "Move It" project emphasizes the importance of the artistic process (talent development, improving personal competencies, …), therefore the results are not the main goal of the project. Instead the purpose of the project is to make students capable of developing their talents as well as the capacity to deal with social problems through creativity. As Brussels’ network for cultural participation and arts education, Lasso had important role in the project. Lasso is not only the practical organizer of the project but also involved and gathered results and evaluated the project.

©Lisanne Valgaerts

About the Lecture Evening

As an introduction the audience had the opportunity to enjoy “short and sweet” accordion concert by Tuur Florizone. Even after the intro, the accordion continued to follow Airan through his lecture the whole time, giving it a special and intimate atmosphere. In his speech Airan presented his work on the project Lecce- European Capita of Culture 2019 as an artistic coordinator. For this big upcoming year Berg has designed eight Utopias that are the core of it. Utopias Experientopia, Edutopia and Artopia together generate a bottom-up process with the aim to reinvent ourselves.  “The Utopias meet each other to generate a leap to reinvent ourselves in a bottom-up process, which is politically, socially, and geographically defined. It is in the interfaces, where these Utopias connect, that interdisciplinary contamination and innovation can take place.” Artopia is a model for artistic creation and the role of artists in social innovation. Acting as a positive virus, Artopia infected the other utopias with creativity and play. This virus keeps spreading further by sharing the needs, desires, impulses as new forms of knowledge and creative innovation. 

©Lisanne Valgaerts

After the lecture, round tables were held. Flemish artists opened questions like "Can artists be engines for social change?" or "How can artists intervene in the lives of young people?" in order to stimulate attendees to exchange ideas, experience and practices. The round tables were hosted by artists: Sammy Ben Yakoub, Dafne Maes, Inne Goris, Stefan Perceval, Daan Milius, Tuur Florizoone and Tunde Adefioye.

The event ended with pleasant gathering in which all participants had the opportunity to network, or simply exchange their ideas and impressions.

For more photos from ARTopia event please click here.