 So, first of all, thanks to everybody who's joining us, who's listening and watching in our discussion about Enforced Artist Mobility, and I'll discuss that concept in a minute. But first, thanks to On the Move. This is an event of onthemove.org, a cultural mobility network, which comprises about 50 members, mostly organizations that give support, advice and information to artists and cultural workers who wish to cross borders for professional artistic reasons, and they're located in about 20 countries. This issue has been discussed normally at the General Assembly, annually at the On the Move meetings, but for obvious reasons we're doing it online now. I also want to thank our host, HowlRound, which is a free and open commons, it's a platform for theater makers worldwide, and it has hosts articles and discussions and live streaming. This is the 181st live stream that they've hosted since the COVID began this year. Very, very warmly thanked and very warmly recommended to anyone who's interested in cross-border collaboration. My name is Marianne Dieflig, otherwise known as MA, and I will be the moderator. I'll introduce our guest speakers in a moment. But first, just to say that this session is shared live on the Facebook pages of Of Course HowlRound, On the Move, Tami's Dot, and Trans Artist. And any listeners can pose questions or write comments. We will get them in pretty much real time. And although this is a short session of only one hour, we might not be able to answer them or address them today, but we will do so by the 17th of June. We'll also upload any interesting documentation that you might find useful on HowlRound's Facebook page and web pages before the 17th of June. So our topic today is enforced mobility. What the heck does that mean? We all know that over the last few decades, there have been many more opportunities for artists and cultural workers to move from one country to another, to exchange, take up an artist's residency, co-create, go to an exhibition or a film festival, learn or just present their work or meet other people in a network meeting. But what about artists whose mobility is not quite as voluntary? That is to say, it's due to certain constraints. Could be persecution due to their artwork or armed conflict, censorship, something that actually makes it difficult for them to stay in their country and to make their work and sometimes even to survive. We call them artists at risk. They are at risk due to their work. All of the organizations here provide support to these artists as well as to other artists in terms of giving them advice, giving them legal advice, supporting their work in many different ways. And we've chosen four organizations because they are complementary in the way that they work. Now our context is COVID-19, the virus that struck us all and curtailed us all and locked us all down, all the health issues, economic issues, bureaucratic issues around it, not to mention the increased potential for artists who may be seriously in danger if they dare to criticize their government's reaction to the virus. And we also have to acknowledge the amazing political movements which have been springing up globally and making a call against systemic racism that also could bring an artist's expression into some kind of danger. So we envisaged this discussion a long time ago at an ITM, at an OTM General Assembly that would have taken place in Finland under the auspices of the Nordic culture point. When COVID arrived, we said to ourselves, we have to go back to basics. Nothing of what we were thinking makes sense at the moment. Everything that's been happening, people who are working with artists who are amongst the most vulnerable have found themselves humbled, have found new questions that they have to ask themselves, new ways that they have to work. So we said, okay, let's just have a very intimate public discussion. What keeps you awake at night? What are you concerned about? What are you learning? How are you reacting on your feet? What about the people, the artists that you're working with? So we will go around for one or two rounds and just ask people to explain how this is affecting their life. First, I'd like to invite Elizabeth Duvik, who's the program director of ICORN, International Cities of Refuge Network, about 70 cities, all in the world, mostly in the global north, but certainly expanding over the last few years to Africa and the Americas. These are cities, municipalities who open their apartments to writers and artists who need the support temporarily. Elizabeth. Thank you, Marianne. First, I'd like to say I'm very happy to be here. I'm very sorry we couldn't have met in Helsinki almost a month ago as we should have, but I hope that this discussion will be just as interesting and that we can learn something from each other. I just want to say a few words about what ICORN does. You said a few, Marianne. Our vision is improved conditions for freedom of expression worldwide. And we do that through establishing safe residencies where the artists can live and work and express themselves freely for up to two years. So it's long term, but temporary residencies. They're mainly provided by the residencies by cities and municipalities, but there's also universities and organizations who work with literature and the arts who host our residents. And we invite artists, writers, journalists, bloggers, filmmakers, cartoonists and so on who are persecuted and I mean individually targeted because of their work to apply for a residency in our network. So we're not in touch with so many who are fleeing country because of what's going on around them. It's always an individual choice for them. And they come from all over the world where freedom of expression is under pressure and more than 60% of those who apply for a residency with ICORN have already left their country. I think that's quite important to know when I continue now. And when I talk about the people who have been in, now that we see how the pandemic has on the measures that we try to or has been in place in different countries to fight the pandemic. I can say that there is like three categories that we, I would say that we work with one of those who are the artists who are already in a residency. And I won't speak so much for them, but they have, I mean, obviously they can't leave the residency, they can't go back, they worry for their families, what are they going to do, they can't find work where they are, but they are basically in a safer place than they were before. Then you have those who have been invited somewhere and who got stuck, they have not been able to travel, they might not have got their residency permit ready, but at least they have an invitation to go somewhere. And then you have all the others who have applied for residency with us, but where we have not yet found a safe space and that all those together, it's several hundred people that we keep in touch with on a regular basis. So the situation now is that the artists who we work with are totally stuck wherever they are. They have no work, they have no income, I would say that their options have been reduced to zero because of the pandemic. It's really difficult in the first place to get any remuneration for your artistic work when you are running from persecution and threats. So you often live on whatever income you can get from local jobs or necessary, not necessarily formal employment of course, but mainly in the informal sector and with no security. And these jobs have disappeared or you cannot leave your house to go and perform your job. So people are totally, many people tell us that they are totally without any income. There's also many who tell us that they have very poor access to health services and if you have your family with you, that's of course an extra reason to worry. And being in lockdown, people tell us it's like a double-edged sword. On one hand there is the feeling of safety, not having to go out of your house into something that can be a hostile environment if you're not in your own community, but at the same time being locked up at home makes you feel like a sitting duck. You're an easy target for those who want to harm you, to expel you from the country or in other ways get to you. So far it seems that the fear of such repercussions is much more a problem than people actually being targeted. But we have heard of attacks and unwanted incidents and we should not underestimate the impact that living in this constant fear has on people either. So it's a serious situation and for the artists that we are in touch with, the lack of money, the lack of access to services, the uncertainty and fear it comes on top of many people's already long-term stress and anxiety from being under threat. If you don't really flee unless you feel under a great deal of pressure and we see that many struggle now with increasingly psychosocial issues and that their well-being is deteriorating and some of this may of course be helped by improving their financial situation a little bit and even sending some small amounts of money might help, but the longer the situation, the longer it lasts, I fear the longer it will take to mend the wounds. And of course, even if an artist has been or a writer has been granted permission to have a residency in your network with a lockdown, they can't get to it. Yeah, and you asked what keeps me awake at night and concerning the situation. Luckily, I haven't lost any sleep. Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist for that because we work very systematically with migration authorities and in the countries where we have residencies, we are already in touch with most of these and they are quite helpful and keep working in many countries. We don't work with short-term visas. They have of course totally, that service has totally shut down, but for the longer term residency permits, the migration boards are still working and they have told us in many countries that they will process this. Now, of course there is an added difficulty of getting to an embassy or getting to an office to hand in your application. There are some issues, there's bureaucratic and practical issues like that, but we keep working and processing these invitations in the hope that this will open up soon. We have also a small, sorry, yeah, I'll come back to whatever else. I would like to thank you. I'd also like to use that to echo something that I know Benedict Alliot has been doing in terms of visas in France. So, she's the director of La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. A very large group of studio apartments for artists to take up residencies, 320 places, 135 French and international organizations, institutions and foundations work with you in order to make these residencies available and artists are coming from a range of different disciplines. Not all of them would be persecuted, but some apartments are Benedict. What have you learned? What are you learning? And I know that you have some, especially diplomats have experienced that echoes what Elizabeth has said. Well, thank you. Hello everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you all, even in Visio. But yeah, it's, I think the tradition of welcoming and of hospitality and of welcoming artists from all over the world goes back at Cité Internationale des Arts, goes back to its creation and the founders who really thought that in a post-World War II world, one needed to have a place where everybody, every artist from all practices should be welcomed. And on that basis, before actually becoming partners with ICON in the early 2010s, the thing was to, was that Cité provided space, provided accommodation informally for refugees and exiles and it started with exiles from Chile, Argentina, South America in the 70s. So I think that sense of, and I think that's a shared, a shared thing of shared feature that we have, all of us is about hospitality and solidarity has now been quite exposed with, well, the recent years, but also with COVID-19, where the enforced mobility also touches, I mean, different kinds of community of artists and to say the least, what was really striking for us and what put us actually at the beginning, at the beginning of the lockdown in a state of stupa, it's like we really were, stop short was the fact that even though some artists who had actually had come to parents to be able to develop their practice, but who were planning to go back home, haven't been able yet to go back home and they've been, well, in enforced mobility and forced to stay in Paris at Cité for now three months and we know that for some of these artists, the time is going also to be quite long before they can go back home. So there's what also, there are two things about this. There's I think about the crisis, a huge crisis that has just begun. The one that we're talking about and it's just the beginning, it's about also the fact that everybody in different ways, but everybody in the artistic community has become extremely vulnerable. And it's been, it's been a race, it's been, that's a French translation, but it's been quite a, yeah, a race to actually fundraise so that the artist also could get some funding so that they could, well, they could attend to themselves to their lives, to their families when they come with a family and have still benefit from a safe place, a place where they could feel at least protection or where they would be, they would find a little bit of stability. But so we had to fundraise that and it's also, I think, we're pointing towards with the fact that international mobility has come to a stop, at least for a while, is, yes, an increasing worry about those who have stayed behind and who are expected to come. I'm talking about then people who come from countries where they cannot necessarily practice their art for many reasons where they cannot benefit from freedom of expression, et cetera, et cetera. And there were quite a number of them that we were expecting. So there's a sense of, well, of a utopia or utopian narrative of, you know, the world concentrated in Cité or the world of artists that can interact or practice, is included from all nationalities. That utopian narrative has, I won't say come to an end, but it has come to a stop and we need to also think about how we can rethink international mobility so that the people who need to move out and need to move in can still do it. And otherwise rethink maybe on a more local scale how we can make still the art scene or the possibilities, the opportunities for artists coming from the outside for them to benefit from that. And so that's also one of the things that I wanted to point out was that I was quite struck at the beginning of the lockdown and that beginning took quite a while was to, there was a blind spot in the public policy and the blind spot was that Residency Centers were not really in the picture. And I had to repeatedly tell my outside partners that, no, we had not shut down and it was absolutely necessary and essential that Cité should remain open for the artists to at least have some accommodation but at least could continue or transform their project. But what was interesting was that there was a blind spot and that blind spot was confirmed also by the fact that when I asked and turned towards public authorities and said, listen, can I get some help, financial help because some of the artists are stuck here. Can we get some maybe some urgent funding for these guys? The blind spot is such that in France, there is no real space made for foreign artists to come on a temporary basis. Needless to say, for those who come without papers, it's even a harder challenge. And so that was an interesting one and we're so trying to set up groups so that we can articulate that. And at the same time, the private foundations and the private sector was far more reactive, I must say, but it's that blind spot, I think tells also a lot about the different kinds of artistic communities and how the struggle they go through because they're simply, it tells a lot about the invisibility of creation or the invisibility of those working spaces in arts and culture. Thank you, Benedict. And it's interesting to hear you talk about La Cité as a blind spot or even a kind of a dead space according to some people. Maybe we'll have time later on to talk about the amazing solidarity activities and initiatives that have taken place just because there is this group, these gangs, these wonderful energetic artists who are living with you. So we've had two places or two initiatives who are really there to welcome and to host artists and to support them. We're going to change now to two other kinds of organizations who give advice, information, who intersect with their own country's legal systems to look at the other side, the more bureaucratic but also essential sides of these questions. I'd like to pass first to Felix Soderman who is working for ITI Germany, the International Theater Institute. And together with the Ige Beka, which is the German International Association of Visual Arts, they have something which is an online portal, also very active with other services called touring artists, which give information, all kinds of visa information, bureaucratic information, not only to artists who are coming to Germany, but also artists who are moving out and touring to other places and also with an eye towards the issues that are faced by the organizations that may invite them or host them. And I have to say in Germany, there are some very wonderful initiatives for what I think Germans call newcomer artists. And I suppose touring artists is also one of them, Felix. Yeah. Hello everyone. Thank you for the short introduction. I wanted to add a few words regarding touring artists. So touring artists was initially founded to support artists who travel or who are working abroad regarding legal issues. And two or three years ago, we launched a new program which was called International Artist in Berlin, which was aimed especially at artists who came to Germany recently from countries where they're not able to work under given circumstances anymore. This can be due to censorship, this can be due to war, this can also be due to cuttings of fundings. So there's different situations which we are dealing with and our program is basically consisting out of three different parts. We have this online portal where we try to give information about visa issues, about project funding, about where to find help, about contact points. We have a help desk service which is pretty much the physical form of the online portal where we try to go more into details with special problems and issues. And people can come every time and get free of charge consultancy. And this year we also established a new networking format in order to create more intense and more vibrant networks between newcomer artists and artists who are already established in Berlin or in Germany. We are facing basically two problems right now during the COVID pandemic. The one is a bit related to that. So depending on where you came from, your legal status can be very different. So let's say your refugee from Syria then you will have a refugee status which guarantees you having access to social security, having access to the labor market. But there's only just a few countries where people can get this status which is Syria, Eritrea and some other countries depending on your situation if you were politically active, those sorts of things. And then we have a lot of artists coming from countries with very tough situations where it has been really tough to make art in the past years like Turkey, Brazil, Russia. But they don't go into this status. They apply for regular visa, like freelance visa. And so these visa are depending on your actual income. So you have to make a business plan. You have to show that you will be able to live in Germany as a freelance artist and make a living out of that. So what happened during the pandemic was that a lot of artists were confronted with the situations of not being able to make money in the upcoming months. And then let's say you're here for your first year you get a visa for one year and you have your date for the extension. And so there was this fear about what's going to happen if I can just show that I worked for five or six months. There was a little communication about that from the interior ministry and also from the local migration offices. But within the last couple of weeks, there was signs that it's most likely it's not going to affect the visa extensions. But you cannot be 100% sure about the actual handling because it depends on the migration office in the different states. Which leads to another problem, which is that Germany is a federal state and Germany has a lot of topics which just the actual country like the state of Germany deals with. And there's a lot of topics which the smaller states, the so-called Bundesländer are dealing with. And those are also those topics as for instance culture and culture fundings. So basically in every country, in every state, there is a different way of dealing with Corona. There's different quarantine rules, there's different measures. We have a liquidity aid for artists. This is also different in every state. The way of the migration offices handling those new situations is different in every state. So for us, it's really tough to get an overview. It's more that we actually accept that we won't be able to get an overview about the whole of Germany. We can just have a look on how it's done in Berlin. So it's more important for us to find people in each state who can give good advice and who we can trust on so we can actually bring those artists to those people. But there's also some positive effects of this federal system, which is that for instance, migration offices are allowed to make decisions on their own in each state. And for instance, the Berlin migration office said for the first time that people who are here with a visa for freelance with a freelance artist visa, if you would say so. It's a right to apply for social security and unemployment payment, which was not the case before. So this is the first time and it was communicated a bit after the first lockdown. So this, this gave some security, but then again, still people are not sure about what's going to happen next. Is this going to be a problem that I at some point were relying on social security. There's, on the one hand, there's like some good initiatives and good ways of dealing and helping those people who are affected by the crisis. And on the other hand, there is the problem about not having like the 100% sure information. And so this, this leaves a lot of insecurity actually in the community. So in the next few weeks, I see Elizabeth nodding. So I think she also has some some things later to say about this proof of work system. But that leaves us very easily on to Matthew Covey, who's the founder of Tamizdat, as well as law firm called Covey law. It's a nonprofit organization, which assists international performing arts people to address problems presented by international borders and specifically US visa policies and procedures and I know that in together with other law firms as well as the people that you work with directly, you've taken quite a leading role in challenging some of the weaknesses in the US, and particular comes to mind the Trump Muslim travel ban, but not only challenging them but also working productively and positively to suggest a feasible solutions to them. And you've also in collaboration with others in New York you've opened up artist residency for musicians. Matthew. Thank you, Marianne and thank you all of you it's, you know, as I'm listening to everybody else talking through their experiences I'm kind of like crossing things off my list of things to talk about because a lot of what you're all experiencing are the same kinds of things that we're doing. So I'm going to be pretty brief and just talk briefly about what we're doing in regards to all artists. In this time of forced immobility, I think is sort of part of the topic right now. And then also then end with a couple thoughts or reflections on our very small residency program that we run for displaced artists at risk. In general, in this current context because obviously a lot of the artists, the artists that we deal with range from pop stars to refugees. And along that continuum, of course the notion of displacement is a question of definition to a certain extent, there are people who are in the US because you know for example, as the Brazilian situation has deteriorated over the last few years we've seen a massive increase of Brazilian musicians move into New York. They're not refugees, they are coming because they want to be there and they're seeing their career situation as being stronger there than it was in Brazil. But that's a definitional question. And so we've seen a big spike in immigration, working with Brazilian artists getting visas. So when a crisis of immobility comes as we're experiencing now. As a lawyer, a lot of the work that we found ourselves doing the case work that we're doing is trying to help people, rather than help people move around the planet trying to help them not have to move around the planet. So a lot of the work that we've been doing is helping artists figure out how to remain, how to extend their status how to explore other options become enroll in academic programs. Move from profession from employment visas to resident visas, and then move from residencies into employment and basically doing whatever is needed to try to figure out how to keep people from having to go where they can't go, or where it'd be really unwise for them to go. Some of this work has been focused on advocating to the US government. So conversations with State Department and Homeland Security. You never know whether those work or not but they seem to be having some effect. The US government just before the COVID crisis created some new rules which make it very difficult and in some ways dangerous for foreign nationals in the US to access public support mechanisms like healthcare unemployment. Which seemed nefarious at the time and then when COVID came along suddenly it seems potentially life threatening for a lot of artists so we've done a lot of work. Helping artists understand what the implications of those rule changes are and helping them strategize how to keep themselves out of trouble how to not risk their visa status in order to keep themselves fed or keep getting healthcare. Another thing that we've ended up doing a lot at Thomas does we've conceptualized our work always as artist mobility. But now that artists aren't moving. We're increasingly working in the realm of cultural mobility thinking in terms of well if people can't move. Can we still keep artists artistic expression moving. So we've long run a pro bono legal assistance hotline for immigration issues which we have expanded in the last two months to incorporate healthcare law issues but also live streaming right rights legalities. So that all the artists that we work with who now are moving their performances online and don't know what they need to be doing in terms of rights and royalties and clearances and all that. We're providing legal assistance with hat. As a way of helping them keep connected with their communities internationally and locally, but also increasingly toward finding ways to monetize their work online, as a way of trying to have some sort of income in this time when when it's very hard for performing artists to have income. Those are some of the main things that we've focused on. In regards specifically. So, man, as you mentioned we started a residency program for musicians who are displaced because of the political content of their work. We started this last fall in collaboration with artistic freedom initiative and the West Beth artist residency in New York. And we got through our first resident in the fall, which went really well, and then my coy Vietnamese composer and songwriter and activist joined us in the winter. And it's been very interesting, trying to figure out what to do with that residency that specific resident. The events have involved and evolved. And as we've done that, the conversations amongst the different organizations, folks at artistic freedom initiative and West Beth and ourselves, they've really resolved revolved around several different topics and that with the different duties that we owe to different constituencies. The first off is obviously is our duty to my coy herself, and the fact that she doesn't really have anywhere to go or moving would moving would be difficult and dangerous. We also have a duty to the West Beth residency, which is a large building full of artists who are very connected with their community but it's an insular group of people sharing elevator sharing common spaces, and a lot of them are elderly. So that is a group of people that we are that there's a risk inherent risk to that. And that's the duty to the mission to continue to work with artists and help them. Initially, our thought was that because of our duty to my coy and our duty to the West Beth the last thing we needed to do is move anybody anywhere. So we ended up extending her residency from three months to nine months, which has been good because it's given her a lot more time to develop her work. Finally, Marianne as you mentioned, in the wake of the political unrest that's roiling the world and certainly running New York right now. That lined up very well with as we're thinking about what to do after September, where we're not really comfortable starting a visa process for getting artists into the US when we don't know if embassies are even to be open. We don't know if we're comfortable bringing somebody from outside and putting them in the West Beth. We're, we've been having discussions about how to change the focus of the residency for the duration of the COVID crisis to working with artists who are already in New York, and trying to figure out how we can address their needs professionally in terms of mentorship, but use the same framework that we were using for international artists but focus them on artists international artists who are already in residence whether they have their own place to live or there's a way that we can transition them into West Beth but not try to bring anyone to the US now. That's thinking we're doing. Thank you. And it's really interesting how we've moved from the actual physical spaces where where an artist can live and work if they're coming over for temporary residency through to what do they need to do bureaucratically and legally through to actually how are they going to do their work. And I know that this idea of strategizing is very close to the work that all of you do, not only strategizing how you overcome the bureaucratic issues but also how do you relate to an audience. We have one question so far from our listeners who asks how can these artists rebuild the trust with the audience offline or online projects. Well, that ties in personally I have to say with some of the issues I've been exploring which is, if an artist doesn't have legal citizenship where they are living. Do they have, do they express a different kind of citizenship and some of you have been alluding to that through the work that they do, whether they're in a temporary residency or whether they are indeed living in the city, legally or illegally but through the work that brings out certain issues. I think that Benedict you have a project at last day which is working progress every day. You have to unmute. Sorry. Yeah, this is a project that we, we developed during COVID-19 and the lockdown and it's, it lacks total originality in the sense that it's digital but what we wanted to make sure is that to provide even on a modest basis fees for artists who would be keen to work on a project that we could put online so you just have to go to our website and it's, it's the chapter called work in progress every day and it was also a way for us to assist them, to interact, engage in a conversation while we were going through all of us this very strange and cunning transition to also try to engage in a conversation wherein the artist would be also maybe able to transform his or her project or transform also his experience or her experience of the lockdown. Because we had during the lockdown, we still had 125 artists on our two sites in Montmartre and in the Marais and so these guys were very careful but also became very, very lonely in the sense that they would be cut off from the networks and from outside as we were all, so work in progress every day was a very modest humble response with our humble means but to make sure that there would be some fees granted and there would be some a platform wherein one could interrogate question one's way of dealing with his work or her work. The other thing is I think about, it also was a way during the lockdown but it was a way also to refocus some of the artists that I saw last week were mentioning that to refocus on some stuff but also to refocus on oneself. So that that ended up sometimes to be quite difficult but quite, quite important and one of one of the, some of the artists and I'm thinking about musicians but could be of other practices actually pointed out that how difficult it was when you came from, well, from far away but you came with your own practice and and for some of them who have decided or have had no choice but to stay in France to have to confront your practice with a professional community that does not necessarily indulge in what you're performing. And that is also something that apart from the visas the bureaucracy which is just is also something is very a very slow process but it is also I think a process wherein one can feel very isolated or in an enforced kind of immobility to quote Matthew is like I'm stuck here and I don't know how to actually articulate my own creation process or my own practice, even though you've been very successful in your own country. And just to get back to the bureaucratic side, I must point out that during the lockdown. We were remarkably assisted by the public authorities in providing visa extensions automatically and papers even to people who had no papers on a temporary basis yes but at least for an extension of three months or more. Whereas in usual times. It's impossible to get in touch with them so I must say that covered 19 has provided some kind of communication which made it less stressful for at least the residents that city, wherever they came from whatever was the visa condition or the paper condition. That's that's made them feel more, I guess, less stressed. Thank you. Let's get back to this idea of what the artist is. How is the artist relating to the people around them. And I know that in Germany there's some very interesting examples is that the Academy de Künste who are I think who runs a program of preparation for like a first preparatory year for artists newcomer artists who may then, if they succeed in that year. Go on to starting a normal arts foundation course. That's just one of them. Elizabeth, I think that in some of the icorn cities, the artists are encouraged to make projects with the local population, what, however they do that, you know it might be, I don't know, workshops for children or it might be teaching at a university what you have here would either one of you like to comment about that what do and is it only for their diaspora audiences or are they relating in a different way to general audiences. I may just start on that. Yeah, there's this university programs which you mentioned. This is actually there's a foundation class at the vice and the university, which is for that course. There's also a program from the Berlin Senate. And there's similar programs in other cities and in other states within Germany. And it brings like refugee artists or artists who come from from countries with difficult situations together with very well established cultural institutions. So they have the chance to to work together for between eight and 12 months and to to create an outcome to create an output during that time. And this program is running for for three years and until now it has been like pretty successful and there's huge interest and they actually they get the chance to to work. With the community of the of the culture institution with the with the audience of the culture institution. And, yeah, I think this is this is a good program yet. Since you're still muted Marianne I'll just take the word and say that we have, of course we have in icon over 70 cities that host artists so each city will have their own program to make the interaction between the artists in residency and the local community but since we have a lot of people who are very heavily targeted. Not all can do that and can be public. So that's a tricky part of it we have to always think of the security of the artist before. First, but I can manage I mean, we and we have all kinds of artists there's musicians who then play with the older of us locally and nationally and internationally, all kinds of genres. But we also I can mention two projects that we have been part of one together with with reporters without borders in Sweden and it's not for artists it for journalists because journalists have a very hard time connecting in their new communities and we have a lot of journalists on our program. And it's called colleague to colleague so it involves local journalists who then have a program together with the resident journalists to see how they can interact and how they can work better in their new place. So the one is a small or a growing project that we call Rattatovsk it's for for now it's a Nordic project and Rattatovsk is a little squirrel that runs up and down in northern northern Norse mythology with messages. It's a translation project where we hook the writers up with with translators and they work together in a special program that goes through and it then this is connected to festivals literature festivals around Scandinavian countries and it's been really successful and it's been wonderful performances and reading and and events through that and of course texts that then gets translated into the local languages. Thank you. It's often the artists led initiatives that that are the most helpful or amongst the most helpful. And I noticed that we have another question I'm not sure if this answers it but often artists who are in these kind of residencies find themselves in a position of feeling that they have to be just grateful, feeling that people think that they're victims, some people think that that's all they are in fact they're very deep and diverse people in our artistic work and in their personal life what they have to offer. So often the artists led organizations will approach the artists who are newcomers on an artist to artist basis, not necessarily in a matter of charity or we will help you poor things but but really respecting them. In that sense this question of Benedict. Many artists who have come over to another country are trained in a different aesthetic. And that aesthetic is not trendy in the country where they land, and we're not necessarily even talking about the language that spoken and we're talking about the language the jargon in the arts community. We're also talking about which curators want to prove them their, you know, superiority by doing which kind of artistic presentations, and we're also talking about filling in funding applications which let's face it is a different language altogether. Matthew I think you wanted to say something. Yes, I did. I'm trying to remember what it was. In terms of going back to the question about building communities, building local communities I think that that's something that became really clear to us very very early on was that that the residency without a mentorship program didn't wasn't going to go and that the key to this was finding a way to work with the artist before they started the residency to outline what kind of project they wanted to do so that we could line up specific individuals who could stay with them throughout the project and mentor them and help them develop those develop their I'm dating myself here but develop their Rolodex who's going to be their, their team of people to work with on the ground and would continue to work with them even after the residency was over. One thing about reaching out to community. A feel good moment that we had with my coy was right in the thick of the lockdown in Manhattan. She did a project with other musicians in the West Beth where they opened their windows along one wall, one one inside of the building that they were all residents and all in their windows performed together just to the street below. They were all separated from one another. And it was really a gorgeous trio that they had going across the face of the building and got a lot of coverage from that because it was a kind of a lovely moment of overcoming the limitations of the lockdown. I'll send a link if you want to see it. Thank you. We have another message, particularly to Benedict. I think it's opening up a different question which we could talk about for a very long time which is the writer has said there's a difference between digital viability and financial viability and I know that a lot of other artists who are just in their own countries are having to deal with that. Elizabeth, would you like to comment on Matthew. Yeah, not just on Matthew, but we're talking now I mean the discussion has gone a lot on to artists who are already in Europe or in safe countries and how they integrate with communities there but I mean what we see is that people who are haven't reached that far yet who are still trying to find a safe place to keep working when they are under these harsh conditions and especially what's happening now. They cannot do any or very little artistic work so their portfolios are diminishing and, and then when they are looking into getting a residency and they haven't produced anything in maybe two maybe three years. That becomes increasingly difficult of course to find a residency that looks at what project are you going to do what have you been doing and so on. So I think that's something that the communities that host artists, especially residencies that look at artistic marriage should keep in mind because it can dwindle your artistic expression can dwindle while you are in a difficult situation. Felix, would you like to say something. Yeah, I just, I have the like slight impression within the past weeks that like usually like established cultural institutions. When they work with a newcomer artist. They are. Let's say they are curious in a way that as like Benedict already said, there's a different aesthetic coming in, they don't know how to put that into their institutions so sometimes working with the newcomers means that those projects are kind of side projects within the whole repertoire. And what I kind of had a feeling in the past weeks that due to covered 19 speaking for the theaters, the programs for the next season are going to be really packed, because there's a lot of stuff which should have been done in the end of this season which now jumps to the next season. So there's, there might be even less space for those artists than there was before so this this. The challenge would be to get them out of this this niche position and bring them in a position where they could. Yeah, where you give space to like a potential different aesthetic. Thank you. And thank you to everybody. This was a teaser, I want to say to our listeners. We wanted to know how much interest there is on this. I can see many different issues that we've been discussing here could be debated for even a much longer time. I wanted to say that one of the reasons, one of the several reasons that we don't have the artists own voices here is because this is so short, and we all felt that it was too short to give them the respect that they would need, and deserve to be able to speak about these issues for themselves. So if there's enough interest on the move and how around might be willing to host more series of discussions on this topic. And I just want to stress one thing right before we finish, which is that I don't think any of us are asking for special treatment for artists to find themselves in this situation and are experiencing a residency abroad I think all that we're arguing for is that they there's an equal playing field that they have within reason the same kind of opportunities that artists would have who live and work in the same country for all their lives. So, we've only got like one minute left. I want to thank everybody again for your time. I would love to carry on and speak about this more. Let's see what the listeners say and thank you to everybody.