IN FOCUS

Starting the 1st of March 2006, Corina Suteu is director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. Founder and president of the ECUMEST Association, Corina Suteu pursues her international career favouring as always cultural cooperation as a key to a more democratic and less conflictual environment. Formerly director of UNITER - the Theatre Union of Romania and of Theatrum Mundi in Bucharest at the beginning of the '90s, she directed the European Master's degree in Cultural management of the Business School in Dijon and set up and coordinated the ECUMEST cultural management training programme for Eastern European professionals. Formerly president of the European Forum of Cultural Networks, she has worked extensively as independent trainer, consultant and researcher in the fields of cultural cooperation and cultural management and policies in Europe. Corina Suteu will also continue to participate and contribute with her expertise to the ECUMEST projects developed in Romania, in the region or internationally.


PROJECTS

At the invitation of ECUMEST, Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper will held in Bucharest on March 20 the conference "Conflictual heritage and recent memory". Art historian, conservator, and theorist specialized in monuments of recent history, Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper will discuss about the conflictual value of heritage in post-communist countries, as ilustrated by various examples from Berlin. The conference, organised in collaboration with the BucharestUniversity of Architecture and Urban Planning, will be complemented by a local perspective offered by Catalin Berescu. ECUMEST thus continues its series of meetings and debates that aim to facilitate a confrontation of the Romanian audience with other cultural perspectives and proposals, some of which of high relevance to the Romanian context. More details...

Active promoter of cultural cooperation within the francophone space, ECUMEST is the partner of the French Embassy in Romania to the "Biens et services culturels" Forum, which will take place in Bucharest on 21-22 March. The Forum is part of the series of events organised under the title "Etats Generaux de la Francophonie en Roumanie" (20-28 March 2006) and aims to question the creation, production and distribution of cultural goods and services, to engage a reflection process on the support to and protection of cultural goods, as well as to give an impulse to the set up of new dynamics of the francophone space in this area. More details and the programme of the forum...

In the framework of its programme of support to the cultural press, ECUMEST currently participates as a partner to the "European University of Cultural Journalism" and its first master class on "Performing Arts in the Media: Reviews and Critiques" (17-23 April 2006, Château de Joinville, France). The project is organised by 'Le Grand Jardin' (Joinville) in collaboration with the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam), ECUMEST, Culture Europe International (Saint-Denis) and the Universities of Bourgogne and Lyon II. The encounter will bring together young cultural journalists and postgraduate students in journalism from throughout Europe. ECUMEST has coordinated the selection of eight young journalists from Eastern Europe, whose participation will be fully supported by the organisers. More details...

As a follow up to the short term training sessions organised in 2005 and early 2006, and as a response to the numerous requests for participation and past applications received, ECUMEST will organise throughout 2006 a series of seminars open to Romanian cultural operators. Among the topics to be addressed: project management and funding for cultural projects, culture as agent of local development, international artistic cooperation. The trainers will be professionals in these fields from both Romania and abroad. More details will be available soon.


PUBLICATIONS

In the framework of the Year of Francophonie in Romania, ECUMEST will launch this March the French edition of the "Short guide to the Romanian cultural sector". Published under the title "Guide du secteur culturel roumain. Un panorama en faveur de la coopération culturelle", the book is an updated version of the publication released in English in 2005 and developed at the commissioning of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Bucharest. The current edition was updated, translated and published with the support of the French Embassy in Romania, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs - General Commissariat for Francophonie. With its first edition out of print and numerous pending requests, ECUMEST will also soon finalise the second English edition of this guide, in an updated and completed version, to be published with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

Corina Suteu's book "Another brick in the wall. A critical review of
cultural management education in Europe", written at the commissioning
of the Boekman Foundation and the Amsterdam University, and published
by Boekmanstudies (Amsterdam), will soon enjoy a double launch: at
Columbia University in New York, in April, and during the ENCATC meeting
in Bratislava, in May. The book represents a comparative analysis of the
developments in the academic training in cultural management and
policies, from an European perspective. More details...

"What have we done here? We have just thrown little stones into the water that created a small turbulence and put the substance into movement, by making a few circles. This is what I intended to provoke" - these are the words of theatre director Andrei Serban quoted at the end of the book "Circles in the water". Undertitled "A workshop with Andrei Serban told by Tania Radu", this publication launched by ECUMEST in 2005 following the international master class animated by the Romanian theatre director at Arcus/Sfintu Gheorghe was extensively distributed both in Romania and abroad to a large number of artists, organisations and instititutions active in the field of performing arts, as well as to theatre universities and faculties from the ECUMEST network. A limited number of copies are still available.

INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION

Continuing her collaboration with On-the-Move and IETM, at the beginning of February 2006, Corina Suteu held a training for trainers session. It was aimed to help the five participating trainers to develop their own training methodology and 'package' to be delivered in the framework of On-the-Move, by building on methodology, documentation and experience of the training sessions developed and held by Corina Suteu in 2005 (in Helsinki & Bucharest) on the topic of 'mobility, intercultural competence, cultural cooperation in the age of digital spaces'. More details...

On 9-10 February, Oana Radu participated in Paris to a working meeting of the Balkan Express network, which brought together the main BE partners: IETM, Bunker Ljubljana and ECUMEST. The meeting focused on the development and planning of its 2006 activities, among which: continuing the organisation of the caravans visits in various European countries, aiming at the discovery and the exploration of other artistic contexts by performing arts professionals in the Balkans; facilitating professional exchange and internships in different SEE performing arts organisations; organising the annual meeting of the network; supporting the BE Dance Group and its regional activities of training, production and presentation in the field of contemporary dance in the Balkans. More details will be soon available in the BE dedicated page at www.ietm.org and on the ECUMEST website.

On 8-10 March, Aura Corbeanu participated in Gent (Belgium), on behalf of UNITER, to the meeting of EUNETSTAR - the European network of street arts festivals, which brings together 9 festivals from 8 countries. Aura Corbeanu is project manager in the framework of the network, in which Romania is also represented by the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (currently securing the network presidency), ArCuB - the Centre for Cultural Projects of the Bucharest Municipality and, recently, by the "George Ciprian" Theatre in Buzau. The Gent meeting put into discussion the future strategy and activities of the network and the participation of its members and partners. More details...