| Programme | Local Development and Culture |
| Selection | Open project |
| Competition title | Open Call “Support for the Creation of Professional Art and Cultural Products for Children and Youth” |
| National project partner | Association (NGO) “Sansusī” (https://sansusi.lv/) |
| Donorstate/international project partner | Morten Bruun, Norway (https://mortenbruun.com) |
| Project national Nr. | EEZ/2021/1/03 |
| GrACE project Nr. | LV-LOCALDEV-0016 |
| Contract No. | 4.3.1-12-1 |
| Contract Date | 10.02.2022 |
| Project title | MORE LIGHT! Exhibition and art residencies in Eduards Veidenbaums museum Kalāči: youth building a harmonious and just society |
| Project promoter | Cēsis district municipality Administration of Priekuli Association, Eduards Veidenbaums memorial museum Kalāči (http://www.priekuli.lv/) |
| Start of project eligibility | 08.02.2022 |
| Project end | 31.07.2023 |
| Grant financing | 206 395.30€ |
| National co-financing | 36 422.70€ |
| Project status | Completed |
| Project goal/description | Project MORE LIGHT! aims to reveal the high potential of arts and culture at improving mental health and well-being of youth. The project will take place in the Eduards Veidenbaums memorial museum Kalāči. By remembering and discovering the poet, included in school curriculum, as a young person with a troubled inner world, youth of nowadays will be able to know better themselves, their peers and learn social-emotional skills.
An interactive museum exhibition, 4 contemporary art works, a drama workshop will be created during the project in a close collaboration between Latvian and Norwegian cultural, art and health professionals, and groups of young people from Cēsis district. The results of the project will be accessible for school youth from all Latvia with the support of the Latvian School Bag (Latvijas skolas soma) programme during the project and in the following years.
The project will not only improve the accessibility of professional contemporary art and culture for Latvian youth, especially in Cēsis district, but will also widen the understanding of the role that arts and culture can play in our lives. Audience development activities will reach the target audience as well as professionals from education and cultural sectors who are directly involved in providing and designing encounters with arts and culture for youth.
The result of the project:
1) An interactive museum exhibition on Eduards Veidenbaums literary work and personality
• Mission of the exhibition: through engagement with literature, visual art and drama let every young visitor take control over his or her mental health and well-being
• Target audience: young people of age 12-18
• Main story line: life and challenges of the talented student of the 19th century Eduards Veidenbaums (1867-1892) – his dreams and aspirations, his turbulent relationships with family and friends, his fragile psychical and mental health, his idealistic ideas of democracy and equality, and of course his modernist poetry.
• Project team. The exhibition will be created in a close collaboration among museum professionals, the target audience - youth, artist Dace Džeriņa and literary scientist Māris Salējs. All content related to mental health and well-being will be carefully developed under guidance of the youth psychotherapist Nils Konstantinovs. A focus group of young people will take part in content development and testing of the exhibition.
• Experience-based exhibition. The exhibition will be reflecting on topical issues of mental health and well-being through interactive, involving activities – both analogue and digital, sparking reflexion and debates, as well as exchanges among visitors. This interactivity will be encouraged by texts and interactives of the exhibition as well as by offering tours and workshops facilitated by the museum educators.
• Types of objects and design. Scenography of the exhibition will support interaction through furniture for sitting / laying down, digital and analogue tasks and activities to engage with. This experience will be suitable both for groups and individual visitors. Next to original museum objects (manuscripts and private objects) artist Dace Džeriņa will create a video installation revealing the complexity of the young Veidenbaum’s character and his relationships with family and friends. The video installation will serve as a starting point for a discussion among visitors; exhibition booklets will encourage exchange and offer questions to explore, games to play, roles to take.
2) Drama workshops on mental health for youth
Based on the museum collection and the content of the new permanent exhibition, an original drama workshop for engaging youth audience with topics of mental health and well-being will be developed by the Norwegian theatre director and actor Morten Bruun in cooperation with museum educators. Drama workshop will be included in the educational programme of the museum and facilitated by museum educators.
3) Artist residency programme in Kalāči
During June of 2022 and 2023 4 artists will stay in residency in Kalāči and develop their art works in close collaboration with local youth organisations, based on the Eduards Veidenbaums museum collection and addressing the questions of mental health. The residency program will be curated by Anda Lāce, curator of the Sansusī well-being artist residencies. Artists will be chosen and invited in collaboration with Morten Bruun, Norwegian partner, who provides partnerships with Norwegian artists. Artists will be chosen in a way that will insure a wide range of represented art genres as well as taking into account their previous experience with the target audience and the themes of the project. In each of the residencies one Latvian and one Norwegian artist will take part. Art works created during the residencies will be exhibited / performed for a wider audience in the territory of the museum. |
| Implementation place | Vidzeme |
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