Inter Alia’s Strategy for Culture and Arts
Inter Alia is dedicated to the support and promotion of cultural heritage and creative/artistic production. Furthermore, IA facilitates collaboration and networking between creators, artists, cultural and creative operators and audiences with specific focus on the intra-European, Pan-Balkan, Euro-African, and local-to-local level cooperation.
IA cultural activity tries to:
- Explore, research, promote and safeguard Local, European and Balkan cultural heritage
- Facilitate local community heritage use and protection
- Enhance and support artistic creation and artistic co-creation
- Empower the cultural and creative sector on the Local, European and Balkan level
- Develop and engage audiences to culture and arts
- Facilitate Pan-European, Balkan and local-to-local creative and artistic cooperation
- Promote sustainable practices in arts and culture
- Use arts as a means to promote socio-political positions on freedom, rights, inclusiveness and tolerance
- Create artistic tools for education and training
IA’s cultural strategy is based on the premise of a wide, multi-modal, multi-owned tangible and intangible culture that (re)shapes and is (re)shaped by the identities of relevant groups. Furthermore, IA sees artistic creation as a fundamental part of human individual and group well-being. IA supports cultural sustainability as an inextricable part of a viable socio-political and economic approach.
IA’s strategy asserts a non-ethnocentric, community-owned culture with open ownership for its heritage. This heritage should be attributed primarily to the local community level and consequently to multiple, overlapping groups and identities. IA stands against passive observation of a grandiose, imposing culture that serves agendas of exclusivist groups. In addition, it claims an open-access creative and artistic sector of (1) interaction between artists and audiences and (2) active participation and co-creation. Joseph Beuys’ “everyone is an artist” quote, expresses the view of IA for serving the natural and fundamental need and ability of human to create and be creative.
In more detail, IA tries to achieve the aforementioned aims in specific ways, means and manners:
It explores, researches, promotes and safeguards Local, European and Balkan cultural heritage through
- Artistic and academic inquiry
- Artistic creation and production
- Promotion and communication of non-exclusivist heritage use
Facilitates local community heritage use and protection through
- Critical, participative approaches to heritage
- Inclusive, non-authorised heritage for all subgroups and subaltern groups
Enhances and supports artistic creation and artistic co-creation through
- Creative and Artistic projects and activities
- Participative and interactive art
Empowers the cultural and creative sector on the Local, European and Balkan level through
- Cooperation and networking between organisations, institutions and creative actors
Develops and engages audiences to culture and arts through
- Creative and Artistic projects and activities
- Participative and interactive art
Facilitates Pan-European, Balkan and local-to-local creative and artistic cooperation through
- The implementation of cooperative projects and activities
Promote sustainable practices in arts and culture through
- The use of sustainable methodologies, means, tools and materials in cultural and artistic production
Furthermore, IA tries to achieve its strategic aims by pursuing certain objectives in each field of activity:
- In the field of heritage, IA’s strategy focuses on contesting ethnocentric and exclusivist discourse and favours critical heritage frameworks. This is pursued through academic research, expression of specific heritage-policy positions, creation and art, and international collaboration and networks. In addition, IA focuses on safeguarding and including local communities in the (re)use of, mostly but not only, intangible heritage through recording, digitisation, open access, and attribution to the local communities.
- In the creative and artistic field, IA supports contemporary art in the context of co-creation, participatory art and all forms of activity that actively engage the audience with the creators and artists. Although art is often used to convey messages, IA supports art and creation as an end and primary aim that fundamentally contributes to the cultural and socio-political progress of individuals and groups. Through it, it also communicates messages of multiculturalism, tolerance, coexistence and inclusion of disempowered groups.
- Artists and audiences grow, learn and better their well-being together. In that sense audience development, which is an aim of IA’s strategy, is tightly linked to the support of creation and culture. IA aims to develop audiences and engage them in culture and arts, not as passive observers against grandiose, imposing spaces, objects and practices, but as active participants, stakeholders, co-creators and co-owners of culture, heritage and arts. Furthermore, IA’s strategy is dedicated to the education-through-arts and at the same time to the creation of educational tools that use artistic means and methods.
- When it comes to the economic dimension, IA seeks to empower the cultural and creative sector with specific focus on the Local, European and Balkan level. For IA arts and culture professions are neither business activity, nor hobby. IA promotes multi-dimensional economic sustainability of the cultural and creative sector through diverse public, private, European, and self-financing resources. The special focus is on empowering the sector in the Balkans, building collaborations with the rest of Europe and bringing them together in a reciprocal learning and well-being process.
- Sustainability for culture and arts, as an aim of IA’s strategy spans in 4 dimensions: 1) convergence with the fundamental principles of sustainability and cultural sustainability,2) economic sustainability of the sector, 3) approach and communication of environmental issues through creation and 4) sustainable use of materials, spaces and resources in the creative process.
