Last Friday (December 07) together with @natalia_skoczylas we had a call with Dimitar Uzunov a bulgarian director responsible for a summer school on Immersive Theater.
Dimitar is based on Sofia, where is responsible from Arte Urbana Collectif, we discussed possible interactions and collaboration with Trust in Play.
First he would be interested on having us (me or teacher from the Trust in Play faculty) to host a 3-hour panel during the 2019 school, this could be an opportunity for co-financing also in the future.
The school is called Summer Scriptwriting Base and will take place from July 31 till August 10 and the space for the talk is in the first 3/4 days, beginning of August.
Second we will have the calls (for our project and for their school) out at the same time, so it could be possible to have cross-communication, being aware that our audience are really different (his school cost around 400€, so if for middle career theater people).
Third, it could be interested on hosting some urban game in the contest of a Festival at the end of 2020 (after our mini-festivals).
So next step on this lead is to share the list of the teachers and workshops that we are having in Athens and propose a sequence of speakers for the 3 hours slot that we have on his school, so he can discuss the opportunity with the other organizers.
After the conversation with him and Natalia it emerges as interesting if we manage to contact Street Theater Festival Organizers, they are naturally interested on having cultural content and Urban Games usually fits really well, actually as Urban Games Factory we were involved on IN SITU (@sebquack is also part of their network), and we brought one of our games to their festival in Marseille the they’ve organized, it was a really cool experience.
And actually it was really important for us for internationalize our horizon.
This sounds great, way to go @natalia_skoczylas for making the connection!!
How about having someone in their crowd join the Athens course next fall? That would maybe help getting more people in Arte Urbana interested in hosting the urban game, find new partnerships locally to support the event financially and tie it in with Trust in Play?
The thing is that the school happens in the summer, before the meeting in Athens - but it is an option, of course.
Dimitar is interested in two things:
having someone come to school and talk about urban game/game design, best if somehow related to immersive performance/theater practice, which is where Matteo fits perfectly, and this will probably happen anyway
having someone design a two-day workshop for the school - and this could be well paid as well, and possibly partly contribute to the budget, but Matteo wasn’t very fond of the idea. I was thinking of having some of the students of the Trust in Play come with one of the tutors to the school to deliver the workshop part - this way edgeryders can get part of the funds, and volunteers gain an extra hands-on experience in designing workshops and working on games, as this will be any way an outcome I believe. Some years ago I designed a pretty successful game for the IFAC festival in rural Spain, with a friend who is a researcher/psychologist. Maybe we could also help with that? Not claiming excellence but as support.
Dimitar is well connected to the Bulgarian funds and he suggested applying for funds in the city to bring the games over - and produce them. This sounds very realistic and he liked the idea, the question remains what do we do with Plovdiv and Matera?
I am also poking around some new contacts I made in Palestine, mostly with people who run Theaters and theater festivals. Let’s see.
I would say the default position is to build new partnerships. It’s unlikely that there will be something so contradictory that for example we cant work with Plovdiv and Sofia, either with the cities or partner organisations… unless I am missing something.