 We will start. Welcome to our last session for this day, Bottom-Up Cultural Diplomacy. I'm Lidia Narogocmiatovic, and I work at the Institute for Theater, Film, Radio, and Television at the Faculty of Drama Arts. And I have to say that I match into the field of international cultural relations and cultural diplomacy. However, the term is compromised. So I really have a great pleasure to have my dear colleagues and some new faces here at the panel today. First, we will hear Jonathan Estanczuk from Palestine from the Freedom Theater. That's all I have to say. I think you will say all the rest. So there you go. Thank you. OK, thank you very much, and thank you for coming also. We have the Palestinian Embassy here today. First of all, it's an extreme honor to be at this particular festival because of very much of what has already been said in the earlier sessions because of the nature of this festival and because of its courage to maintain those visions and values. So it is indeed an honor to be here. The particular subject is called bottom-up. And that might seem, at the first glance, to be something clear-defined. But I would like to say that it is not always to know what is the bottom and what is the up. And it is not easy even for the Freedom Theater that is clearly seen by people around the world as a grassroots movement working bottom-up. But for us, it is not clear. And it's a contradictory environment that we are in. I would also like to say that Mira Trilovic is a great source of inspiration. I didn't know about her before, but her power of inspirational leadership in a time when things were not clearly defined, of creating a leadership and a vision that encourages people to think freely. At a time when it is not also maybe not accepted and maybe not culturally integrated to think in those ways. The other point is that I feel comfortable speaking in at the BTF because it encourages provocations. So if I provocate anybody, I would like you to consider it within the framework of the conference. When some of you, I also want to mention that I've been interviewed on the blog of the BTF. So you can also go and read more about us there. And of course, on our resources online that are very, very rich. Now, I was asked to start with, let's see, this is PC to show a map. And I had huge problems finding a map that I felt comfortable with. This is the closest I could get to. But even this is a simplification and does not fully show the reality. But maybe this is something that shows the transformation of the geography and the fact that it is almost impossible to find an entirely correct map of Palestine. So when talking about the freedom theater and a bottom-up perspective, I was asked in my interview to explain our aim. And I would like to say that we've never had a clear aim. Our journey and what our maybe most important leaders have said and the things that we do most appropriately defines our aim. So I'd like to start with just showing a few quotes from our current and past leaders. So Arna Merhamis died in 1995. Juliano Merhamis was assassinated in April 2011. And you can see the quote there, I don't need to repeat it. And the third person is Zacharias Beidi, the former leader of the resistance of Janine refugee camp. So what these things say about us is what we define ourselves as, as part of a cultural resistance movement. And cultural resistance is defined in many different ways. And maybe the mere difficulty and multi-definition of the word is part of its essence. So what you see at the back are some things I've found by Googling the word. And they all correctly refer back to what we do and how we refer to the word ourselves. In order to try to define what we do and create a model that maybe others could use, we've tried to define cultural resistance in our own context according to four main pillars. Now these are in no way complete. They are fragments of something that is much, much more complex. And already during the one and a half day that I've been here and having the opportunity to speak with some of you, I've already seen additions to these pillars. So when we look at it, it says identify the points of injustice, unite with the oppressed and listen to their stories, create the conditions for change and be a unifying force for the resistance and create alliances. And these might seem like obvious things, but they are not. I'd like very briefly to go through them. Okay, my timer isn't working, so you have to tell me, give me like a few minutes notice. So first identify the points of injustice. So here we've tried to create a model for that as well. And the reality is not easy. This is a simplification of our reality. So we talk about the external oppression. It is Israel, obviously, through the policy of military occupation, a system of apartheid and colonialism. It is the internal political oppression that we are suffering from. It is the increasingly economical oppression to some extent generated by foreign aid. And it is an internal social oppression very much through the internalization of the destructive culture that is around us that leads to internal social oppression as well. So what we say is that the resistance has to start from the bottom. We need to start first with ourselves and identify the oppressors within ourselves. We have to deal with them. Then we can go up in the levels of oppression. For the ones of you who are familiar with George Orwell, he has several novels, books to exemplify the risk of not first starting with yourself and the oppression that is within yourselves and that we all carry and need to be aware of to say at the least. The second pillar that I mentioned is unite with the oppressed and listen to their stories. What we do very much in the freedom theater is that we go to the people and we create spaces where they can express their stories. We use those stories. They are shared collectively. They are being narrated. They are being exposed both on a local, regional and international arena, strengthening our own narrative, creating our own contemporary history of Palestine so that we can become the capturers of our own narrative and that our narrative can be the leader and not somebody else's imposed agenda which is largely what has happened. We have become subjects to others' agendas. And this is an example of how we do it. Here we go out to the most areas that are under the most severe attacks. So this is the Jordan Valley. These are communities that are under very active ethnic cleansing and we try to make their stories heard, bring people there, create events and make those places known and for those places also to feel heard. When it comes to create the conditions for space, we think that that is not an easy thing to do because first, a safe space needs to be developed where people feel comfortable to express themselves, to share deeper parts of their own personalities. So we believe that that is the first condition, a place where people can feel safe and then not primarily physically because we can never guarantee our own physical safety but we can work on the safety between us. I need to trust you in order for us to do something together, to create something together. Later when we trust each other, we can start playing and then I mean play by not the play we relate to children but a sophisticated play in creation, something new in experimenting together, in crossing the borders of our restrictions, of our framework. And the third thing that in this process we learn new things together. So that is the fundamentals of education. When education does not come through the process of play, it is an imposed agenda and it's part of the oppressive structures. So we want to change a culture of fear and distrust into a culture of learning. So that is the fundamentals of creating the safe space and we can relate to some other terms here. We work holistically, the body, mind and the spirit. It's about me, my community and the world around us. Who am I? Where do I come from? What do I want with the future? Many young people that we work with for them, the future is black. The future is something that is realized in the morning when I wake up and be a unifying force for the resistance and this might seem a bit strange, but for us, especially the Fidem Theater located in Janine refugee camp, there's many kinds of resistances in Palestine. Palestine has historically shown some of the largest multitude and forms of resistance in the history of resistance. So instead of saying that we are better than another kind of resistance, no, we are saying that we need to complement each other in order to be successful because now there is a competition about who is the right kind of, or the best kind of resistance. No, we need to complement each other. And as Juliano Merhamiz said before he was assassinated, if the front line of the revolution is not, if artists do not participate in the front line of resistance, then there's a great risk that the revolution will fall back on itself because we need all the time to deconstruct, rethink our reality. So a way to look at it is to show a very famous mosaic, one of the oldest known mosaics in the world. It is located in the town of Jericho. And we could see it as if every stone of this mosaic resembles, represents another kind of resistance. But it is only when all the stones are together that it becomes a pattern, that it becomes something beautiful. And one of these stones we'd like to see is cultural resistance. These are, okay. These are some of the plays. The first one we did, as I mentioned, in 2008 was Animal Farm. We did The Caretaker, which was an adaptation of Harold Pinter's play, but we have very local adaptations. Allison won the land, but here we were talking about the young woman caught in the labyrinth of society's expectations, demands, her own dreams, love, desire, and so forth, and the people pulling her back and forth in this labyrinth. Suicide Note from Palestine was roughly, it was inspired by a US play that was called Suicide Note. We made it a Suicide Note from Palestine dealing with the international aid and how that affects a young person in Indian refugee camp. Power poisoned, dealing with the power struggles in society and how it poisons any social relationship and context. The Island, a play written in South Africa by Anton Fugard. About the experience of imprisonment and which is an experience almost every Palestinian man has gone through. And these are some resources to where you can have more information about us. And as a last point I'd like to mention that we'd like very much to also be able to represent our work in Belgrade, in Serbia and in the Balkans. So one of the reasons for why I came is to also meet with theater groups, producers and so on here during the conference and in Belgrade, and to think of opportunities for presenting our work in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. Do we hear it? Okay, thank you very much for the very thought provoking and I would say passionate speech, Jonathan. I think the mic is not working. Do you also think the same? So you have to redo everything? No, no, no. We heard it perfectly, but something went wrong. Okay, so thank you again. And now I would like to present our dear guest from Croatia, Daniela Urem. Many of you know her already. She's from Unicult, from Rijeka, and I think she will give us a bit different perspective of the importance of international collaboration in the European capitals of culture framework. Thank you. And thank you for sharing your stories. It was really interesting. Good afternoon. So I have two presentations prepared. The first one will take about five minutes and it is about Unicult 2020 program and I think it's better if we show that first because this is a result of everything that I will talk about in the first presentation. So I'm just not very good with PSTs so I don't know how to just open. Okay, it's here, good. So Unicult 2020 program, it's a program, the University of Rijeka that started about three years ago as a part of Rijeka's nomination to become European capital of culture. I'm so happy to say that it is from this spring and Unicult became a part of our bid book. So it was at the beginning about our city, about Rijeka in Croatia and the program is combined of many different parts. Of course we have a lecturer, the faculty, we have a strong mentoring program and the collaboration that happened through this platform which is lifelong learning platform at this point going to become a master degree program really created for our city and for our nomination. So many international collaborations. It started with people who were presently working in Rijeka inviting their colleagues, their friends to Rijeka to discuss, to give us idea to really we were visiting around the Europe seminars, forums becoming more into networks, into everything preparing for our nomination. So at Unicult 2020, I invited Chris Torch who is a program director of our nomination today to help me with this program and this is how it started. Today we are thinking about master degree, we are thinking about capacity building, we are thinking about many different things that will enhance and really put weight on educating our students and our cultural workers. I have been working 20 years in New York and running my own foundation to promote Croatian arts and culture. When three years ago I returned to my hometown of Rijeka you can imagine many people ask me why? I mean what is the challenge? I realized that there is so many things missing and at this platform that it's needed to be developed, it's needed to be changed. Of course it's not easy because living in communism for so long it was closed a space and it was not ready for something that I was used to working while in New York. So Unicult 2020 looked like this, it was our second year this year. This is a mentoring plan, our professors. Let's talk about, it was interesting part which was all about practice and sharing personal stories. It is about belief that the most we can learn it's in very easy going and relaxed environment. So we invited two professors to pick their own subject without preparing to say as many personal stories, opinions and it was really by our evaluation at the end perceived as one of the most important. This is mapping of the city and our national theater in Rijeka. So this is Diana, she is my first assistant student from the first year of Unicult 2020 and she lives in Romania and we are perfectly working over Skype and over email. There are no boundaries. She really can help me with everything. It's almost the same as she is next to me all the time. So it's also one of the collaborations that we need to think of. Mathias, he received, he's from Sweden. He received Dragon College Scholarship which we give for the cultural policy. That's me, the program was presented at the Culture Forum this year and this really helped to open and for students to know about. Fritzi Brown, she came from New York, that's Arsling, I was working with her back in New York. You know, Professor Milena, you know, William, Lydia Verbanova from Canada, Emina from Pogon, Darko, you had pleasure to hear everything about him. This is Lukciosic, so Robert Manchin from Culture Action Europe. This is another international collaboration as a part of the program. What I would love to stress here, I'm not presenting or marketing Unicult 2020 to you. I would love you to see all the details of creativity that we can apply to something that it's known as very much structured inside a formal educational system. So Music for Airports was another very interesting presentation program. We opened the international call to musicians who will work with Sopile and our way, our music from Istria and Primozki Gorski Kotar, where I'm coming from. And we got really, really big interest. Four musicians were chosen through the Music Tech Edu from Sweden, a scanner from London, and they composed for our airport music which is installed this year after Unicult 2020. This is us dancing. We have a couple of sub-programs. One is Refugee Integration, and the other one is Echoes in Focus that we are working with the cities that would love to become one day capitals. So how many times, I mean, I still have enough. So first, talking about importance, there are some guiding principles for EU action that you can read. And then I'll talk about walls. I will come back to walls again because walls are the one, I mean, you know, continuing to what you were saying, we were in your situation so many years ago and today sitting here in Belgrade, it really doesn't feel as international collaboration for me. It really feels that we know each other very, very well, too well for us to learn from each other. So it is really beautiful feeling and the important is that we need to use this as an advantage, advantage of knowing that we once lived together, now we don't live together in that sense, but if we spread to Europe that feeling, that similarity that we have, we found in any other country of Europe, I think this will bring us much closer. I think it will really put down the wall and enhance collaboration and dialogue. But as we all know in Europe today in the world, now waiting for to see what will happen in America, we also in Croatia struggle with politics. We struggle with the way of treating creativity and challenge for things to be better, for things to be changed. So I remember the, Peter Sellers gave the lecture for UCLA students and he said to them that the only way to find out who you really are and to work from that inside is to work for free. Of course I'm not promoting here because we all know in arts and culture we are doing so much free work and helping each other, but when I returned and I was invited from Rector's to from the university to create cultural programs, I asked him, I said, is it okay if I work for free the first year? And just I will have the open hands to create and to really be free to do something else, not to be so closed up into legal system or things that prevent us to go. And I think that was the reason why it happened, why Unicult became in such a short time a really great potential. So you all know what the European capital of culture is and this is a chance not just for our city and country, it's a chance for the whole region and not just the region, it's a chance for the whole Europe because now in Rieke we are waiting, we are open, we would love to collaborate, so it's two ways actually a process and I think that it will happen. I am pessimistic and I think that everything will be perfect, but also concerned after experience that happened in Maribor, I'm concerned what kind of education is needed in such a short time, which is four years. For us to really make sure that things are the best possible and that it will stay, of course, after 2020. And this is about European dimension of the collaborations and project, this is what I meant. And this is also politics that they need to be changed, they need to be adjusted and more flexible. So how to organize the education? I think that informal was perceived as not as serious, but informal gave the first platform for something to be really, really detected and really gave us the opportunity to change it easily to by creativity make sure that things will be produced at the postgraduate level as best as possible. And these are the questions, how many more minutes I have? I said about Yugoslavia and to use our other tip. This is interesting and this also relates to Croatia and Serbia and other countries that are considered smaller in size. It says that there is inverse relationship between the degree of internalization and the size of the country. So small countries offer fewer opportunities for interaction within them borders and therefore present a stronger initiative push factor for international collaboration. This is another advantage that we can really use and I think that we should. Yeah, so it's in Europe, it's also when I read that, I thought maybe it will be interesting. In Europe, when we collaborate with France or Italy, it's all international collaboration. In America, when New York collaborates with Pennsylvania, it's not. So it's also a way of looking, I think, in Europe separates us also that way. So I think I didn't count because there is many, many subjects here that I will not be able to cover. But I can post if you're interested or send you. And this is the rank of what I was talking about. This is the rank of the countries and their collaboration in 2007 by percentage. I think that Slovenia, it's on 31, 31st place. It is an international collaboration. It's a topic of the... So this is what I was saying, that a smaller country, they try harder, that push factor. Croatia, I have the sources at the end. Okay, so the potential problems, of course, of international collaboration, according to Manning, coordinated and coherent federal and non-governmental strategy to enhance international efforts, a clear and strategic priorities, identification due to increased demands and opportunities for international engagement, an improved coordination among provincial, regional, federal, national governments, and non-governmental stakeholders, an important information provision to key stakeholders, MIPIS government officials, international partners, media, new opportunities for strategic discussion and national international level, a new partnership which enrich government to government relations. Most of these programs are not on us to solve, but it's on us to do our best and in our work to really move things up. So the lack of coordination between national and provincial governments lead to insufficiency. Financing, financing that is also very needed, not the most important but very important in our work and productions. And challenges and issues, international collaboration can be combined into three major groups, national, institutional, and individuals, and this is what I meant. So through theater, as we know, it's a means of diplomacy and in our city of Rieke, Oliver, for which unfortunately is not with us anymore in that sense, but his programs and his idea that through last couple of years are still continuing. This is one of the ways how to collaborate on a national and regional level. It is an example of the weekend and popular subscription where we invite people to come from other cities on the weekend time when they don't work. And this is the Music for Airports project that I already presented to you in a first presentation. And this is my thank you, thank you. Daniela, thank you very much, both for sharing your experience and also for sharing, I would say, a kind of optimism beside the theoretical part, of course, for optimism, for really practicing international cultural cooperation. I think we all need this at these times of global crisis. And now I would like to welcome Biela Tanorowska-Kiulakowsky. Okay, I made it. Okay, I didn't. The card, don't worry. Yeah, Biela is also our alumni from University of Arts and the leader of Locomotiva, Center for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture. And she has, again, a new perspective on the topic of bottom-up cultural diplomacy. And this is something about cultural operators and independent scene in Macedonia. But you will give more of the details. Thank you, Liliana. Thank you, Mariana, for inviting me and to Professor Milana. Actually, I think I'm the only representative in the panels from Macedonia. The others couldn't come or couldn't make. When I was called, the topic that I should have presented was the topic where I feel more comfortable. It was about the festival. So my abstract was about imagining and modeling festival as a critical post-institution. However, then it shifted. So I tried actually to depict what, for me, this cultural diplomacy means as a cultural actor in the independent cultural scene through that perspective. So I wrote something from that perspective. And I kind of title it as cultural actors from the independent cultural scene, the antipods of state cultural diplomacy. So firstly, I will briefly say about Macedonia for those who doesn't know what it's going on now. Actually, I live in a country that mostly also in a critical media can be described as the regime country, dictatorship country, et cetera. And from the perspective as a cultural operator in the civil society, I would confirm that. And I will explain or try to explain three examples why is that. So actually, because first of all, in these circumstances, let's say in the past 10 years, it was very difficult to realize many of the actions, ideas, concepts, what were part of the independent cultural scene. So the described society at this moment, that does the leave in a political crisis. And I had, at least for now, past two years, two working shifts. One was working in the place where we produced, it's a new place, Kino Koutura, it's called, or in the cultural environment. And the second shift was six o'clock at the streets protesting. So that was happening for the last, let's say, two years, but mostly until July, the past three months, it was going on every day. There were different and different protests going on on the streets, which the civil society was part of. So about the cultural diplomacy, actually I would try to put it on the level of what I practice, but try to first give the definition what is kind of the definition accepted. And that is a curse of action based on exchange of ideas, values, and other aspects of culture of our identity aiming to strengthen the relations. We heard a lot about the relations in the past panels, partnerships, et cetera, but also to generate new. And to enhance the sociocultural collaboration. So the role of the cultural diplomacy is related with the culture in its totality, I would say, meaning doesn't represent only the nationally constructed and represented cultural identity, but also this identity politics formed through the sociocultural content producing different sectors, of course, in the public, in private, and also in the one that I represent, which is the civil. So the cultural diplomacy, it's also a part of the general cultural policy, and it's related to its dimensions. So in that relation, for me, it's necessary to open the question about what is the cultural policy in my country or in the context, or what is the question of contemporary cultural policy nowadays, it's more oriented toward the citizens, the individual in the whole territory in the country. Territorially conceptualized principles of cultural policy of what Professor Sheshich was also writing are differentiating from the traditional or anachronic so-called cultural representation of the state and nation preservation and promotion of the cultural identity, but through pluralism, diversity of the ideas, actions, concept, and enhancement of new productions, processes, and cultural content. So also cultural policies are a set of practices that together with the relevant institutions through different regulations are shaping the everyday life, I would say. But also cultural policy employs means in which presentation or representation of certain ideal are shaping the human life, especially through dominant and marginal media of communication where these values represented and identification with them is possible. So in my country, also in Macedonia, access to the media where these values or different values than this promoted by the establishment cannot be found because the media were, are occupied in the past, let's say, mostly six years, and in the manner of the agate proper presented the values that the larger population is identifying with because there is no diverse, let's say, presentation of something else. So no matter that culture is necessary, so-called autonomous realm within the society, which in order to be positioned as an autonomous in a metaphysical or also in a technical sense, it is performed by a certain political act, I would say. But also that's kind of a decision, different political acts. Therefore, it is important what is the content of that political act that shapes the cultural policy. It is related to the general political ideal, I would say, that within the state context. And cultural diplomacy is inevitably related with the same political ideal represented with the state system. So question is how in a political ideal where civil society is totally marginalized as in Macedonia and put under scrutiny by the establishment, a cultural diplomacy can be activated or how it is performed by the players in the civil society. When I say it's put under scrutiny, I would say that also the civil sector or independent cultural scene is diminishing in the past years because we are facing something that I would say implicit censorship, which means like cutting all the supports and becoming invisible citizens or even in Marina Grzinić terms, he raised citizens, I would say. Anyhow, as in most in the ex-Yugoslavia or post socialist countries in South-East Europe, the general cultural landscape in Macedonia is dominated by the so-called official culture created by this unmanageable system of cultural bodies which are heavily centralized and being under the direct control of the state administration. So cultural institution is part of the rapid political, economic and other changes in the societies, have not yet experienced a significant structural transition or moreover they inherited the principles of governance from before and from the past and such a situation only works on preservation and conservation of the traditional, which means building the cultural representation which is producing so-called crisis in the cultural field and I think this is also used by Sanyan Draguevich since there is insignificant support of plural and diverse cultural content and here we can evident the cultural policy completely subjected to the national ideology in Macedonia. On the other hand, there is a tendency towards the cultural policy which is a liberal model justified by the explanation that the liberal model will bring along different basis for pluralization of the cultural life, et cetera, and better adjustment of cultural products to the actual needs of the people, et cetera, et cetera, or we are facing this approach of cultural industries that are just coming through the door, not understanding in its essence what they mean and how they should be implied into the context. Being aware that we cannot denote or we cannot deny this economic aspect of the cultural production, it's important to note that these different market strategies that are entering through the doors, especially in our countries, are neglecting social foundations for culture and its public roles. So this is the context in which we work in the independent sector. However, the culture kind of more serves like a symbolic reservoir for national mobilization and creation of new nationalistic symbolics in Macedonia rather to create certain responses that could facilitate different solutions to the different problems and to stimulate some tendencies which are coming. So on the other hand, this civil sector, we are also having this cultural of resistance as you are saying, and we are always within the conflict and then, how to say, we are questioning ourselves in this Spivak manner. It was this strategic essentialism. Do we go in a conflict situation? Do we over-criticizing and insisting on this on the details or we should insist on essential issues from what we can gain benefits? So we are still questioning ourselves which is the strategy that we should take. So anyhow, this independent cultural sector, it's a specific, I would say, in this region and employs the values and models of collaboration which are in some way democratizing the environment, processes that can be found, our self-organization, self-management and other collaborative participative approaches inclusive, flexible and open to transformation. Actually, we deem to address the presence, the actual social, cultural and political and economic processes. So in the independent sector, artists, producers, critics, et cetera, et cetera, activists initiate and create and act in a very similar manner, sharing common values and tend to build a society in which they would like to live together with the audiences, with the stakeholders, et cetera, participants, supporters and et cetera. But operating actively in the context make them to be in the relation with the present because they critically reflect the presence and they act towards the actual needs, the problems and et cetera all with the aim to reflect the different future and this is the way how they convey their message, they, we, I don't know. So independent sector also produce the dynamic systems of collaboration, production, dissemination and et cetera. And diplomacy for this sector is therefore a creation of vivid relations, stream structures that would allow presentation of values they stand for, their aspiration, activities and plans. On the other side, the official system are not permeable, not inclusive and do not include the actual actions developed in the independent sector. Therefore, my perspective is there is one or official cultural diplomacy which exists and the other, the cultural diplomacy of the independency or an antipode of the state cultural diplomacy in the country. So as I mentioned before, but to say it again, if the cultural diplomacy should be open to various impacts and to include, then how can we affect it in the closed and representational cultural political system as in Macedonia. And the civil sector in Macedonia, am I late? No? So I run, that's why. So the civil sector in Macedonia develop this cultural paradigm where it questions and critically reflects what is happening, especially this identity politics which can be very much visible in the last project, Scopia 2014, for those who doesn't know, you can easily Google it and find out more. It's about also the monuments and how through the monuments and new identity politics are imagined but also created. So the independent sector creates this field in the diplomacy which is implemented through actions of actors on the international scope, I would say, and the only thing what made us alive as an independent cultural sector in the past years is the relation with the international scene but also with the region and with our partners from the region. So despite the obstacles, the independent cultural scene operates parallel to establish dominant system, promoting new cultural and artistic content together with the innovative work practices. With the international partners, we promoted new models, new platforms, new networks and et cetera, et cetera, being active also in various advocating processes, which goal was to affect the cultural policy reformations on local, national, regional and et cetera level. So on the other hand, the official level of collaboration, let's say in the system of the institution is very sporadic, non-systematic and occasional. And I would like to name couple of these regional, local, cultural diplomacy bodies, I would say. So it's like this Nomad Dance Academy, it's one platform that exists from 2005. Then it's called Perotiva, it's a regional platform for culture and collaboration. Then all this association of independent cultural scenes. But I also would like to say that we created in the past years other cultural diplomacy bodies like Condance Festival, which I would say that it's also heterotopia in some sense or in darker words it's an agenda setting where the invisible is becoming a visible. Then we created this Festival of Locomotion which unfortunately we will end this year because there are no circumstances for such a continuation. And I can name also others, but I think it's very important to name them symbolically in that sense to understand that there is a great asset into this sector of independent sectors. So in order to have a cultural diplomacy that would be effectuated in its totality, a cultural policy system or the political ideal should be stretched or reshaped from the political ideal of representation to the political ideal of inclusion of diverse opinions, concepts, ideas, methods, approaches, and et cetera, et cetera, has to be constructed as a trampoline in some metaphorical, let's say, sense or a platform from where the action of diplomacy can be started. The platform for me is the space or for us is the space for action or a space that allows different actions to happen. So with such an approach, cultural diplomacy as a course of action, building relation, new sustaining past can be performed. Otherwise, it can stay to perform only the political agendas and the ideal of cultural representation as it is now in Macedonia, oriented towards the presentation of cultural identity narratives that do not belong to many of the actual actual cultural players that I voice at this moment. So thank you. Kvala, thank you. Thank you very much for your critical reflection of both the mechanisms and I would say ideological matrix of contemporary cultural diplomacy and the practices of civil society in Macedonia. And I think we are on the similar wave for our last presenter and who has multiple roles for both of these days. So I don't have the title of Mariana Tsvetkovic's presentation but for those of you who don't know Mariana, she is beside many things that you've already reached in your life, the present director of Stanica or Center for Contemporary Dance. And now I will give you some. So I have also a role to keep you awake now and it's a hard task. I know it's been a long day with a lot of talking, a lot of ideas and questions which I like. But I promise to be short because I have to be. We need some air and also some change of content and environment. But what I wanted to share with you today came out of thinking on one side, thinking about this conference together with Professor Brigidjevic Szersic and thinking about how to include one very important part of a cultural scene in Serbia and also in this region and also probably in many other similar social, political and cultural environments which is the independent scene. And just like Biljana, I wanted to give the voice to the independent scene of Serbia to the question of international relations and the role of people who work in the field of, who chose to work in the field of independent culture in what we call international relations but even a cultural diplomacy. And I work in the field of contemporary dance and contemporary performing arts but also somehow larger in the field of independent scene. What is it? It's a part of civil society, so like part of this third of the culture of sector where we have public, private and civil society but independent scene is actually, let's say more or less formal collective of various and numerous small and large organizations who choose to work in a way to be critical towards the environment in which they work, towards the policies that create their frame of work and also towards the conditions and production models which are imposed or which appear to be possible for their work. And from such a context, of course, or before I go to the specific phenomenon that I wanted to share, I have to say that we in the independent scene in Serbia did or do surveys from time to time about the impact and the different other factors that define the work of independent scene and impact of this independent scene to the cultural field but also to other fields. And I can say that in Serbia, around 45% of all cultural programs that are produced in one year come from the independent sector. On the other side, 10% of the public budget goes to the independent scene. So 10% of the public money is given to the people and organizations, projects and initiatives that come from the independent scene. This shows not only how independent scene is active and important for our cultural field, but also how this part of the scene is capable, active, proactive and dynamic also in finding ways, finding means to create all these programs and of course achieve all these different impacts. And when we speak about independent contemporary performing art scene here, I also have to hit a few numbers. We did a survey three years ago which showed that 60% of people who are active in the contemporary performing arts field in Serbia live abroad and that 80% of people who stay here who are still here want to leave. They are just looking for a way which gives really a kind of dramatic dimension to the field in which I work. And I'm very concerned about the ways how to change these numbers and about how to find ways to still not, of course, keep all these people for living because they live for different reasons, private reasons, education reasons and so on and so on. Mostly, of course, for professional reasons. But I think that our task in the field is to find ways and to fight for the ways how to keep these people and their work, however present and visible in the local scene. And when we were facing this situation and debating all together about it, about this huge brain and body drain, we came to a definition which is the extended scene. So, Serbian contemporary performing arts scene is not only the scene which is produced and created by the people who live here, collaborate among themselves with different institutions, different actors and so on and so on, but also those who live somewhere else. And as far as we have people who are connected with our scene, this is our scene. It is as big as we are spread around mostly Europe. But there is an extension to this and this is the element of our regional identity as well because Serbian contemporary performing arts is defined, created, originated not only, or conceived not only by people who come from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niche and other places in this country, but also by people who come from Zagreb, Ljubljana, Skopje, Sarajevo and other places in our region and who are in their own countries but also who are in some third countries because the connections and relations are so intense. And then from this map that is created or conceived or observed from such a perspective that there is a question. What is the impact of these people, of these creative people on the understanding of our cultures, our cultural identities, values, ways of working, ways of producing, ways of being critical and acting critical. What is their impact to this understanding somewhere abroad, somewhere far from this place? So what is their role in diplomacy or in promotion or in making visible this culture abroad? And I think that the impact is huge and that especially in the dance field if you are close to the field you can very often hear that people talk about so-called Balkan mafia. What is Balkan mafia? It's all these smart and strong people, mostly women, I must say, who are spread all around Europe in different institutions, different projects and initiatives in different universities who represent our scene or scenes maybe in the best possible way. Not as persons who come from certain place, but persons who are carrier of certain way of being critical and acting critical, of being able to produce critical work which affects then all these places where they work and live. So this is like rather a proposal for you for maybe thinking and disgusting. Does it make sense? This is a question for me and I'm posing it actually to all of you who want to reply or who want to say something. Does it make sense? Is it something we should regard, we should look at as a channel, as a diplomatic channel as a way to really essentially present our cultures and our different cultural identities. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mariana, for words of hope for our world and for also encouraging collaboration for arts practices in the region and also for giving a kind of gender perspective to your talk. Now I would like to invite you, dear colleagues and friends, for your comments, questions. I think we have enough time if you have enough enthusiasm in this afternoon. I think our guests and presenters are willing to answer. Yes, or maybe someone from you would like to start. Okay. I have a question for Jonathan. You said that you start from asking people what concerns them, close of concerns them. So it starts with the close of things and later going up. It is not easy, I suppose, because it's easier to have to find the enemy, external enemy. But how do you move from this internal process to high-quality artistic performance? What is the role of the artistic director or the trainers, mediators? Do you do communitarian theater or do you just give some material that artists will later decide to compose in a certain way? Are these performance play only with these participants? Are they also play by professional players? So which kind, I suppose you have different answers so that depends on the piece. So what is the role of each typology and what do you think it works better in relation to empowering citizens and empowering the whole society? Does this work? I don't, does it work? Yeah? Okay. Okay. So, okay, so as you mentioned, we have many different forms of doing this. I want to use some practical examples and one way we use it with students because we have a three-year professional theater training program, acting and devising program in the freedom theater and the current students that are now in their third year they're about to graduate. The first production they did was called Enemy. So the process that took place was first they were asked to define their enemy. So the immediate response is as you mentioned is oh, the Israelis, the settlements, et cetera. No, what is the enemy inside of you? So with enough work and progress you come to different patterns. It might be that in school they had a very abusive teacher. They might be, they're very afraid of their father, et cetera, et cetera. They might be bullied when they were in school. At the same time, they're giving the methodology of Medusa that has a very strong cause and effect relationship. So they need to investigate that story and at the same time go deeper through narration, through embodiment of their own enemies and later through the devising process with the help of dramaturg and of director, et cetera they combine the two stories into one play that is performed. So this is an educational process that they went through. Now, another play that we recently did was called Mrawah Al-Falistin, it's Return to Palestine. So this play was the result of performing playback theater during the course of two weeks in about a dozen different communities. And playback theater is a method where a story being told by an audience is immediately transformed into pieces of spontaneous theater. So the collection of these stories led to the devising of the play Return to Palestine that was later performed in many of those communities from where part of that play was taken from. And this is a method we've done for a few years now in various ways. Another play that was much more prestigious in the sense of a sonography, et cetera, that also last year made a huge success in some of the main stages in the UK. The play was called The Siege. And it was a way of trying to understand the events that happened in the Nativity Church in 2002 that was put on the siege by the Israeli army while a small group of armed Palestinian men together with a few hundred civilians were locked inside. So we traveled to various parts of the world because many of those persons are today in exile in different parts of the world. So we interviewed them, we interviewed a priest that was inside, we interviewed some people that were affiliated to the thing. And through that process, we tried to capture some of the essences of these stories and the play was performed in Palestine. And to the audiences in Palestine, the play was provocative because it showed these men that in the view of the Shahid, the view of the martyr are holy, cannot be touched. But in the play, they were also craving for hunger. They were really hungry. They were dreaming of sweets, of knafeh. So in that sense it was provocative to a local audience. For an international audience, it was extremely provocative because it took men, Palestinian armed men, it was represented by six men with Kalashnikovs and M16s in their hands. And that's a taboo to represent Palestinian armed resistance on stage to international audience. So there was a lot of demonstrations. Now a third play that was made for children was math exam, that was the name of the play. And that was the result of a small research we did in the refugee camp of Janine where we asked the children what they are afraid of most, what triggers their fear. And we realized to our surprise that it was the math exams in schools that creates an extreme level of pressure from their parents, from their family, et cetera. So we made a play about the process, a young boy in his family before the math exam. So these are some of the ways how the stories from the people in various ways of collecting the stories are then devised in different ways. Sometimes into community spaces, street theater, sometimes into main, procedure main stages, national stages. Thank you Jonathan and thank you Mr. Bonet for your question. Now Sunchitza has a question for comment. Thank you Diana, thank you for your presentations which are at the end of this day a kind of a, let's say a point on many things which we have heard today. I was wondering strongly after the afternoon sessions about several things which were said here. Let me depart from what Mariana was saying. I truly as a theater maker and also a cultural manager from Serbia, I have to say that when we consider cultural diplomacy as a soft strategy or strategy of achieving through soft means certain let's say political objectives or ends. In our case here in Serbia, it is not really at all clear what are the ends because we do not have an official cultural policy. Neither we have a kind of a straight or clear way that the culture is developing or the place and the role that culture has in our society and in that case, in that aspect we are very, I would say unique because in other countries of ex Yugoslavia which was a term used very frequently today here, Serbia is maybe the only country in such a position. We may not agree with decided cultural policy in Macedonia but it is there, we can maybe disagree with certain cultural policy in other countries but they are formulated and they exist. Serbia does not have a cultural policy, does not have a strategy of cultural development not to mention action plan and other things and we would need to have that by all our international agreements which we have assigned but still we don't have it. Now, what I mean to say is that in such a situation, the civic sector has very important role and I'm myself a selector of an off festival which is happening out of Belgrade which is happening in the city 40 kilometers from Belgrade which is called Smederevo and this festival was started in 2005 when it was necessary to reconnect Serbia and Serbia culture with the region and Europe. What happened this year is that we did not have the festival for the first time. We did not have the money and we did not have any other resources to acquire this festival. The situation is much more serious than what we are willing maybe to admit because setting of the agendas as Professor Darko Lukic said very correctly, for the civil society and for developing the active citizenship and the sense of opening towards Europe and opening towards the region and opening in every sense which is pluralistically cultural and so on starts with this kind of initiatives. So I was willing to share this with you and maybe to open one new perspective in this broader subject frame, thank you. Thank you. Would you like to reflect on what Tsunchitsa said? Darko? Just one sentence. To Tsunchitsa, unfortunately Croatia has no cultural strategy of cultural politics. The last draft we had was 2003. It started as a process of public discussion and then it stopped by changing the politics, the government and since then we didn't even start to work on new one. So there is no document, there is no written document, there is no official cultural politics, it's improvisation from one minister to another, from one assistant minister to another, improvisation and you know, uhodu and nothing more than that, unfortunately. Just to add, because you were referring to Macedonia that we have this cultural policy, I mean you should really read what is this cultural policy. First of all is the mesh, no no no, I just want to say that in Macedonian past years many policies and strategies have been developed but none of them has been implemented. So therefore you know it's a question of what do you do with these papers, not just to produce them in that sense, how you perform these policies in the scene. A question for Jonathan, maybe a couple of questions. First is who do you aim your theatre at? Is it a Palestinian audience? Do you ever do work for an Israeli audience? Do you primarily work for an international audience in order to raise consciousness about the Palestinian situation to raise pressure there? Secondly in terms of our discussion around policy, I mean diplomacy and cultural diplomacy in particular, what is your position on the cultural boycott of Israel? And thirdly you were quite keen to come in, perform at BTIF, if BTIF did host a play from Israel would you still perform at BTIF? Yeah, tough but not so difficult to answer. First of all who does our theatre aim to be for? It's rather who wants to see or listen to what our theatre does. It's maybe a better way to turn it around. I would say that when we do theatre for children we can do 100 plays and they will still try to tear the door down in order to get in. When it comes to youth it's getting already more tough. When it comes to adults it's difficult to get adults to come to the theatre. So that is why during the last five years we've started increasingly to bring the theatre to the people rather the people to the theatre, which works in many ways better to the conditions and especially the communities that we primarily work with which is not the communities in Ramallah or Bethlehem or as such. So we aim to produce theatre for whoever wants it. In practice primarily for children and youth. We perform internationally. It is not our prime target. Our prime target is what you saw on the slide. It is to create spaces for stories to be found, to be told, realized, to build and strengthen communities, to empower communities, increase their resilience, etc. But we have a function and a responsibility also to share those stories on an international arena and that's maybe fortunately and unfortunately where the theatre has become most successful. We are in some senses better known on the international arena than sometimes in Palestine itself. Which is a contradiction that we are grasping with ourselves. Among all the other contradictions that we are living within. Now about the Israeli audiences. We do not perform for Israeli audiences for some several reasons. For one reason and maybe the main reason is that we cannot get out of the Palestinian... May I use a term from your own historical background from the Palestinian Bantustans? Our actors and especially our actors because they come from a high-risk security area according to Israel cannot get into Israel proper according to internationally defined borders. So even if we wanted and sometimes we haven't been against performing in any of the mainly Arab theatres within Israel's internationally recognized borders but we haven't been able to. When it comes to the cultural boycott we stand behind the Palestinian call for boycott and divestment and sanctions against Israel as called by a boycott national committee the call that started in 2006 and that is supported by the majority of the Palestinian civil society. And we stand particularly behind the cultural and academic call that is led by Pak B. Now that call is not black and white it is a very well-written sophisticated document that goes through many, many different scenarios and situations and using the word of the author of this document that 99% of the cases are in the gray zone. So we apply it very carefully and we study each situation individually with the support of Pak B. and by other partners that we work with. We would, it depends on, let's say we were here at BITF and an Israeli group would also, it depends on how it would be presented. If we would be part of different events and we would not be put under some kind of reconciliatory or political agenda of representing both sides in what might be perceived as an equal situation or a binational conflict then we would not accept to be in it. But if we would stand alone within our own narrative and be able to represent our own work without a sticker put on us of normalization of an absolutely abnormal relationship then we would accept it. So it depends very much on the kind of framing of the whole thing. How would the poster look, you know? Yeah, thanks. I wanted to quickly reply to Darko and Sonjica, is it? And colleagues from Macedonia and Belgrade is that the rhetorics of our countries don't have a policy is in somewhat, I think, wrongly interpreted because not having a policy is a policy, yeah. It's a very, very strong policy. But in a sense as much as we can sort of understand it as a negative state of the arts in our countries simultaneously it's a very positive perspective because it is something that needs to be created with all the social and cultural capital and resources in artistic and cultural organizations that as we heard in the presentations are basically present in all these contexts. And by not having a policy doesn't mean that we don't have a system in place and not to end on a gloomy note we sort of like the creation example of a systemic upgrade that was brought on by civil society actors. So the only upgrades that we have in our non-existing policy were initiated by the civil society organizations. So the first hybrid institution, the first foundation for the contemporary civil society organizations in contemporary arts. Even the cultural councils with the Ministry of Culture are a result of the advocacy process that came from the independent sector side rather than institutional. So, you know, like we can take the situation I think more from a positive perspective is that we don't have a fixed situation. It is very ambivalent and very frustrated but also sort of opens a lot of space for negotiations. The only problem is that it's been 25 years and, you know, people get tired of negotiating and advocacy and lobbying. So has, you know, like new generations. I think that's the way to go. I totally agree with not having a policy is the policy. I think it would also not go. I also agree that in certain situations it's better not to have a policy paper and then letting us be free to do things without restrictions that such papers might impose on the field. Especially in our situation where we have these very retrograde nationalistic and in every other sense problematic public policies which we overcome without sense of freedom to do things the way we want. Of course, it demands a lot of work to find ways how to do it. But, yeah, sometimes if you are positive then it looks better than the other way around. Just to add, actually like in Macedonia for ages we didn't have cultural policies since, I don't know, since independence until 2013. And suddenly there was this document which actually it was not having a cultural policy, it was a policy. It was a statement as a political act of these governments. But what this government, which is the right government, did was presenting that, okay, actually we will do, we are good students, let's say. So in that sense they produced the paper that doesn't have any meaning. So in that sense I'm saying like, even in this blurry situation of not having a policy you can act and create the policies as an independent sector. But in a situation as ours where we have written explicitly said lines in which we should go and follow, that even makes the situation worse for us, you know, in some sense, especially in a conditions as I explained. Any more comments or questions? If no, let me thank you for the very fruitful discussion for this last session for today. The keyword that I will take from this session is definitely resistance and giving the voice to the voiceless. But also showing a kind of resilience towards the normative discourses of cultural diplomacy and fostering and strengthening participation in artistic and cultural practices. Thank you all for your patience and see you each other for tomorrow, tomorrow morning. Okay.