Culture, Arts and Refugees

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Stella Bridgeman and Zory, Oval House Theatre

Location Visited

Brussels, Belgium

What did you do?

We investigated opportunities for the Network to develop European partnerships and access funding. We met with Sophie Hayles – Arts Manager and Nigel Bellingham – Deputy Director/Head of European Programme from the British Council and Jan Runge from KEANET.

Contacts

What did you learn from your study visit?

Nigel Bellingham at the British Council was very interested in the ‘network’, as they are more interested in working with networks than individual organisations. It would be good to communicate with them as soon as possible about our agenda, identity and areas of expertise. They are in the process of shifting its agenda away from promoting British culture abroad to being much more about networking, partnership working and development. We talked a lot about what we have been doing on the PLN and about the various issues we have been exploring, especially about the ethics and purposes exploration. They were very interested and seemed not to have entered into that kind of debate before.

Jan Runge is Manager of International Projects at KEA. He has a good working knowledge about European funding and initiatives and made some good suggestions, such as making contact with our MEPs and informing them of our work.

What key issues or questions did it raise for you?

• There is always a question of capacity – have we got the time and energy to open up new areas of work and service new relationships. I am always torn about this.
• I wonder if all the people in the PLN are keen to follow this up or whether I should just follow it up from an Oval House perspective.
• Any bid for EU money would have to be centrally coordinated and managed. I wonder whether there is scope for this.
• Can we persuade the BC to take the lead with the PLN members as partners?
• Finding the balance between strategic working and grassroots delivery – always an issue for me.

In what ways has this experience changed or enriched you professionally?

Zory and I started the meeting talking in quite an academic and formal way – using the accepted language and code for meetings and then maybe because I was feeling ill or because the meeting was a bit dry, I changed the way I was talking, I made it more real. This felt so much more comfortable and I think we made a much stronger impression. Zory talked a bit about her own artistic practice and we both explained some of our thinking about ethics particularly about work that we don’t support. I think we were quite challenging really and it was quite an unusual encounter. I hope we made a different impression than most people they talk to. I was glad that they found out who we really are.