Backstage Club is an international workshop series tackling key aspects of international collaborations, such as: fair practices taking into account the different cultural and socio-political contexts; cross-border collaborations in time of environmental crisis; diversity aspects. The event series is open to artists and cultural professionals locally and internationally as well. It aims to foster knowledge sharing by involving key experts in the field as workshop holders, initiate collaborative thinking among the participants on the topics and improve awareness of cultural professionals and artists to international opportunities (such as funding and partnership development).
The first Backstage Club took place in April 2024 in Athens-Greece, with two more to follow in 2025 in Budapest-Hungary and Dusseldorf-Germany respectively.
Workshops
Athens – Sustainable touring & equal opportunities
The event focused on the aspects of international presence of emerging and mid-career artists in the European and global markets. It aimed to provide an understanding of the different contexts based on which the opportunities for international visibility and international touring need to be examined. This means for example the different access to sustainable means of travel, different levels of financial resources that are needed to tackle environmental issues. In the frame of the event participants gained insights to good practices in the international sphere, and were given the platform to discuss and approach to each other their different realities.
Budapest – International and alternative funding sources for the independent performing arts field
The workshop will be organised in the frame of Nextfeszt, a festival for emerging artists in Hungary. The partners will offer discussions and workshops on crucial aspects of cultural production, such as the question of how could we lower the high burnout rate in the field; establishing more sustainable ways of working; creating a better understanding among technician professionals, artists and managers through joint training on technical aspects of production and touring.
Düsseldorf – Diversity
The three days will cover three different aspects of diversity in relation to cultural production: from the migration point of view; from the non-normative point of view; from the work structure point of view. Experts on the different topics, residing in the NRW region, will be invited.