First impressions & topics

🇪🇸 (Ya que el Atelier usa el inglés como lengua común entre los participantes, y recojo las primeras impresiones en ese idioma de manera más rápida, la traducción de este artículo al español estará lo más pronto posible. ¡Gracias!)

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🇬🇧 One of the general feeling yesterday came when we focused on the topics of the Atelier. Being: Community, audience, fund-raising, artists, international/intercultural, diversity, impact, communication, marketing, promotion, coproduction, innovation, politics, ecology, innovation, diversity, and many more.
We gathered in three big groups to discuss our experiences and beliefs with Sir Jonathan Mills, Hugo de Greef and Rania Elias. 

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At the group I was part of, I realised that our experiences had a common base: responsibility, integration, social action.
Hally Jean spoke about the Australian aborigins, the indigenous community and the role her festival played on integration. I remarked the success of Música en Segura Festival thanks to bringing together musicians from different fields (flamenco, early music, tango and string quartet) to Spanish Heritage buildings, such as the Arab baths, the medieval castle, and the olive oil mills. And the add up of selling the experiences of wine and olive oil tastings, and hiking at the region amazing surroundings. So ir was more about integration of historical buildings.
Jan de Moor stated one of the problems of the Concertgebouw Brugge: the aging of the audience! How the majority of their audience are over 57 years old. And how, in order to innovate and bring younger audiences, the venue came up with new experiences, and not so many ordinary concerts. From Bach with yoga, to listening to an ensemble while laying in the dark. A whole different perspective. 

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So, in a way, we were really talking about a the role of a festival in engaging audiences, in bringing together traditions and the culture of the aborigins of each country, and of using the historical buildings and venues by bringing them back to use and life.

The true role of a festival is to help artists to dare, to engage in new projects 

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In between the discussions about innovation, technology, and the role of festivals, we were invited to take a private tour to the Budapest Opera, a historical venue. Time stopped, and we traveled to the 19th century, its music, its audiences! We had the chance to discuss about the differences between the aristocracy and the working class when buying tickets, an interesting elitist topic that was compared with nowadays reality: you can seat wherever as long as you pay for it (with the exception of the Royal box, saved for the president, minister and international royal guests). 

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After the tour, we were welcomed by Gergely Vajda, Artistic Director of the Armel Opera Festival and Competition, who did a presentation about the festival. An interesting topic were the partners of the festival. The Armel Opera Competition partners with 4 international parterns and productions and has the rfeedom of not depending directly on Hungarian political agenda or public money.
We will join and watch the second round of the Armel Opera Competition and Festival in two days. 
At dinner time, the participants paired again in groups, this time diferent from the working sessions, and exchanged ideas about the venue, the Opera House, and the topics of the Atelier. 

Sara Illana | Participant of the Atelier for Young Festival Managers. Budapest 2016.