| Programme | Local Development and Culture |
| Selection | Open project |
| Competition title | Second round of the open call “Support for the Creation of Professional Art and Cultural Products for Children and Youth” |
| National project partner | LLC "Story Hub" (https://www.storyhub.lv/) |
| Donorstate/international project partner | Culture Break Borders (Kultur Bryter Grenser), Norway (https://culture-break-borders.com/) |
| Project national Nr. | EEZ/2022/2/14 |
| GrACE project Nr. | LV-LOCALDEV-0035 |
| Contract No. | 4.3.1-12-18 |
| Contract Date | 27.09.2022 |
| Project title | Valmiera Multimedia Festival Youth Arts and Education Programme |
| Project promoter | Valmiera Municipality government (https://www.valmierasnovads.lv/) |
| Start of project eligibility | 01.11.2022 |
| Project end | 30.03.2024 |
| Total eligible costs | 242 542.19€ |
| Grant financing | 206 160.86€ |
| National co-financing | 36 381.33€ |
| Project status | Completed |
| Project goal/description | Project summary: The project "Valmiera Multimedia Festival Youth Arts and Education Programme" will create six (6) new professional multimedia art products and an accompanying education programme in physical and digital environments, involving the primary target group - young people aged 15 to 18 (secondary school pupils) - in all stages of the project. Involvement is foreseen in the creation of the artworks, in feedback activities, in the festival and in training.
The project involves an interdisciplinary approach to the creation of art products, involving professional artists and secondary school pupils, as well as experts representing other industries from Latvia and Norway in the process of co-creation. The project will also create an interdisciplinary experience of artworks in both physical and digital environments, ensuring quality accessibility of all newly created artworks both during the festival and on an interactive digital platform specially designed and adapted for the project.
The project will include training for different target groups, an in-depth audience research lab, a hackathon for secondary school pupils and artists, a prototyping, building and testing workshop, accompanying educational programmes and the development of a digital platform. The project will culminate in a youth arts and education programme as part of the Valmiera Multimedia Festival and the launch of the digital platform.
Project objective: The project will result in the following professional contemporary and new media art products:
● Five (5) interdisciplinary art products - an art programme for young people in a physical environment, co-created with professional Latvian and Norwegian artists and professionally oriented young people (arts, music and design secondary school pupils) aged 15-18. The newly created art products fall under the categories of professional contemporary and/or new media art. The art products created within the project broaden the possibilities to learn educational content in a modern way for broad audience of secondary schools pupils (the art products have an accompanying educational programmes, taking into account the specificity of the learning process and guidelines, as well as involving relevant experts in the field), contribute to personal development (the artworks cover a wide range of themes - topical and socially important topics for young people, forms of self and world knowledge as well as strengthen the critical thinking skills) and reduce social exclusion (wide opportunities for free access and involvement).
Before the co-creation process starts, training for the project participants and wider professionals in working with young audiences will be provided. A wide range of experts (e.g., teachers, youth researchers, youth psychotherapists, etc.) are also systematically involved in the various project activities - training, hackathon jury, product testing/approbation, etc. Involvement of the wider target group (secondary school pupils aged 15-18) and exchange of views in the different stages of the development of the art products: audience research laboratory, where discussions on topics relevant to young people are organised, testing of art products and educational programmes, development of an art mediation programme and training for the audience in a physical environment, etc.
As an innovative form of creativity and co-creation is chosen, the process of creating art products starts with a hackathon of ideas and values. The aim of the hackathon is to create 5 teams of project participants, united by the desire to work on both the exploration of a specific theme and a particular multimedia or interdisciplinary form of artistic expression. The primary unifying aspect is an interest in the topic and a desire to speak about it in the language of artistic expression. The form is in turn sought and refined during the hackathon process, by combining the skills and knowledge of the team's professional artists and young people, as well as by attracting the necessary mentors and technical support for the success of the project, which includes the hackathon's format and organisation. Each team has a very clear idea and form of artistic expression at the end of the 24-hour hackathon, after which the teams present their ideas (pitching) to the jury, which includes a first audience feedback activity. Work on the development of the art products through to the final deliverable continues according to the activity plan.
All newly created art products will be original, innovative and include a combination of different genres. They will be mobile and transportable, so easily shown repeatedly (replicable) in Valmiera, Latvia and Norway. Digital forms of artistic creation - XR (AR, VR, MR and 360º experiences), digital artworks with e.g., game elements or other forms of interactivity, etc., physical forms of artistic creation - installations with interactive and multimedia elements, artworks powered by sensors or programmed robotics solutions, audiovisual installations, 3D printed artworks, etc.
The first exhibition of all art products is planned for the contemporary art space "Kurtuve" (Valmiera), as part of the Valmiera Multimedia Festival in February 2024. The entire art programme will be free to the public and will be separated as a whole - the Art and Education Programme for Young People, which will take place within the framework of the festival.
● As one (1) separate product should be considered an interactive digital platform of the project. It will be an interdisciplinary solution that will provide access to the five (5) newly created art products and the accompanying educational programme (unique accompanying activity for each artwork), as well as video archiving of the most interesting related events (e.g., edited videos from professional trainings, artist talks, summary from audience research activity, etc.). The design of the digital platform experience will be representative and equivalent to the physical experience of art products, i.e., artists who choose to work with the development of a digital art product are required to ensure a witty and artistically pleasing representation of the object in a physical environment, while artists working with a physical form are challenged to rethink the representation of the art product in a 360º interactive environment on the project's digital platform. The digital platform and all accompanying content will also be available free of charge to the audience for at least 2 years after the end of the project. The content will be available in Latvian, English and Norwegian. The platform is intended to be a separate environment specifically designed for the youth arts and education programme, i.e., clearly separated from the overall landing page of the festival. The page will be designed as a unique web address that can be shared and interacted with directly, and will be accessible from the main festival page by clicking on a banner on the homepage. The digital platform will be tested and approbated in parallel with the testing and approbation of 5 art products in the physical environment.
All six (6) products will be accompanied by education programmes in both physical and digital environments that will be related to the content of studies and contribute to the achievement of the goals set in the educational standard. In the physical environment, the main mediators will be trained secondary school pupils who will host groups of students (their peers) in the contemporary art space "Kurtuve", communicate the content and form of the art products, and engage young people in various activities adapted to the physical environment that will help them understand the message of the artworks and promote the process of self-discovery. In the digital environment, the mediators of the educational programme will primarily be teachers, who will be trained in the use of the platform and its different content units, as well as provided with precise guidelines for the integration of the programme into the teaching process. The platform itself will provide a briefing that can be used by the young people themselves and by any teacher or other arts and education mediator who wishes to use the digital platform with young people after the project has finished (i.e. audiences who have not received training or been involved in any way in the development or delivery of the project activities and arts products). Education programs include forms of audience involvement both before and after the experience of artworks, as well as possible interaction during the artwork experience (the multimedia form of artworks can be made interactive, so as a result 1) the process of audience reflection can become part of a artwork experience; 2) the audience can be involved in the co-creation of the artwork, supplementing the existing form with new content during the experience.)
Within the framework of the whole project and in the context of audience development, it is possible to distinguish 5 (five) innovative methods that are implemented in collaboration with the target audiences: 1) youth debate as a form of audience research (labs of audience research); 2) hackathon - professional artists and pupils values and interests matchmaking, teams formation, artwork ideas development and ideas evaluation together with representatives of the target audiences; 3) physical and digital products development with comparable experience design; 4) product testing and improvement together with representatives of the target audiences; 5) arts meditation training for secondary school pupils aged 15 - 18 years. |
| Implementation place | Vidzeme |
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