URBAN ART IN MODERN EUROPE
Europe is becoming more and more culturally diverse. This cultural diversity remains mainly invisible to the established creative industry. Luckily, numerous creative young people are not discouraged by this lack of recognition. They perform, practice and compete with one another, often using new technology to produce what is termed ‘urban art’.
ROOTS&ROUTES INTERNATIONAL
An increasing number of Roots&Routes initiatives empower these creative youths by helping and coaching them in order to improve their singing, dancing and media skills. Arts and media as tools for their artistic career and integration in the social and cultural life.
A number of these initiatives and organizations are united in the
Roots&Routes International Association that members are based in 12 EU countries.
ROOTS&ROUTES PROJECTS
Roots&Routes step1 projects – one week workshops mainly centred around the production of performances where urban talents work with professional artists and coaches.
As a result quite a few of these creative young people, who had participated one of those projects, want to continue to develop a professional career as an artist or in a related profession. Many of these talents do not have the sufficient educational background to enter into an art school or into another vocational training. However, even if the talents have the necessary requirements, most of these institutes are not attractive to and suitable for these young people as their curricula are still exclusively based on the western culture and do not have special attention for fusion between the migrant and western cultures.
In order to empower these creative youths in realising their professional career, the EU Leonardo funded project
Roots& Routes Summer Courses was developed in 2006. In five countries Roots&Routes partners executed national summer courses where motivated urban talents, who had taken part in one of the R&R step1 projects, were able to follow training modules in diverse urban music and dance styles, theory and practice of the creative industry and light, sound and media technique.
The experiences that had been gained at the R&R summer courses led to the EU Leonardo funded project
Roots&Routes Academy. The aim of the Roots&Routes Academy is to train young talents to become Peer Coaches thus providing the necessary skills and knowledge. Roots&Routes Peer Coaches are young dance, music and media talents who are educated to coach other young people of similar or younger age. Therefore the Peer Coach seminars contain creative, cultural, social and entrepreneurship content.
The whole Peer Coach program is geared to the development of a determined set of competencies and an individual style as a coach.
The EU Culture funded project
Art'n'Go, launched 2009, give young artists from across Europe the opportunity to develop sustainable productions and present and promote them in mainstream festivals between May and August 2011. A cluster of R&R best practice creative works representing the richness of cultural diversities within the international Roots&Routes network.
Workshops & Performances with international R&R artists:
Roots&Routes @ tuning in to diversity conference 2010 - Budapest
Roots&Routes Experience 2010 - Rotterdam
Art'n'Go 2010 - Cologne
Art'n'Go 2010 - Vic
Roots&Routes Experience 2009 - Rotterdam
Roots&Routes A_Maze 2008 - Florence
Roots&Routes Experience 2008 - Cologne
Roots&Routes @ Cultural Sunday 2008 - Utrecht
