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Workplaces Of Care

Re-Imagining the Cultural Entrepreneur


A OFEN Co-Arts course designed for university students that explores how to infuse care into the cultural industry. This program invites participants to rethink the workplace, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment for all.

Course Highlights:

 Interactive Sessions: Each meeting includes time for proposing performance tasks, engaging in discussions, reading, writing, and group collaborations.

 Mentorship and Feedback: Participants will receive both written and verbal feedback to enhance their learning experience.

Objectives:

  • Explore innovative artistic practices that prioritize human needs over traditional models.
  • Discuss the dynamics of power and leadership within the cultural sector.
  • Address the challenges of precarity and vulnerability faced by diverse groups.
  • Foster peer support to create a collaborative rather than competitive environment.
  • Develop a group manifesto and individual artistic statements.

Key Topics Include:

  • Rethinking artistic practices beyond conventional frameworks.
  • Non-capitalist processes in the arts economy.
  • The performer’s body as an archive of experiences.
  • Leadership and power in the context of global challenges like climate change and public health crises.

Course session outline

  • Module 1:

    Introductions and Getting to Know Each Other

  • Module 2:

    Practicing Care and Levelling Hierarchy-Feedback, Support and Universal Access

  • Module 3:

    Re-Thinking Artistic Practice

  • Module 4:

    Non-Capitalist Processes

  • Module 5:

    The Performers Body as an Archive

  • Module 6:

    Speaking Text – Recorded Voice as Communal Reading

  • Module 7:

    Developing Boundaries with Working Conditions – Contracts, Payments and Intersectional Quotas

  • Module 8:

    Utopian Visions in Dystopian Times

  • Module 9

    Manifesto as Future Guidance

  • Module 10:

    Performing Performativity

  • Module 11:

    Discoveries and Conclusion