Kate Organ previews an international congress where delegates from all over the world will examine how the performing arts can change the lives of communities.
When the International Society for the Performing Arts met in New York in January 2005, the conference began with a three-minute silence marking the Tsunami disaster, which was only a few days old. While conference delegates networked with colleagues, made business deals and reflected on the concerns of their profession under the theme of ?Necessary Excellence?, the TV and media reports relentlessly unfolded the scale of the impact on landscapes, on communities, on families and on individuals. What sense could be made of this by arts professionals, and how in the world could the performing arts be seen as anything but irrelevant, trivial and unnecessary in the face of such serious and genuinely life-changing events?
The Sage Gateshead, along with its neighbours Live Theatre and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, plays host to the next ISPA Congress. The theme is Changing Lives. There are a lot of conferences around at the moment with similar titles: ?Transforming Communities?, ?Changing Landscapes?, ?Changing Places?. Is this a peculiarly British concern ? to claim that the arts have the power to do this? Certainly in the UK there is a long history and a developed infrastructure dedicated to working these things out. Arts Council policies, professional bodies, local government departments, academic courses, evaluation studies, lobbying groups and specialist community-based companies are all pursuing that aim.
The Sage Gateshead is seen by many as an example of a new kind of organisation and building, in which participation is as important as professional performance; where vernacular and popular cultures are as warmly welcome as classical cultures; and which is the absolute birthright of everyone living and working on Tyneside, not the preserve of a privileged few. It has certainly changed the landscape of Tyneside. The congress it hosts will explore the extent to which communities, families and individuals? lives can be changed by art, and how arts professionals are changing in response to the changes of society.
Gateshead and Newcastle have responded through the arts to the major upheavals in the economic foundations of the region. ISPA will hear from leaders of cultural change in South Africa, Iran, China, Japan, Brazil, and the UK. The opening session will see Andries Oliphant?s update on the cultural landscape of South Africa, a generation after regime change; Jude Kelly gives an account of how a cultural programme on a truly global (Olympian) platform might make sense; and Vayu Naidu will give her first hand account of what the arts were for in the Tsunami ? how they were so far from being unnecessary and trivial but were in fact a very crucial force in the process of surviving disaster and making sense of the most extreme example of changing landscapes, changing communities, changing families and changing individuals ? changing lives.
?Changing Lives?, the ISPA Congress 2005, takes place from 19 to 22 June. This is preceded by the ISPA Academy Programme (17?19 June) at The Sage Gateshead, which will offer a full examination of the region, the city and its cultural policy, as a case study for the connections between culture and regeneration, policy, programmes and projects. For further details,
w: http://www.ispa.org