An interest for a lager diversity within the art field
Motivated by a common interest for a larger diversity within all parts of the professional art field, Fiksdal and Holte are interested in who can imagine themselves as artists in the future and who can access professional art today. The artistic director Kerstin Scroth had been following Ingri Fiksdahl for a while before HORDE, and described the key questions of the project.
“When they developed the performance, I got super interested in the concept of the performance that poses the questions: Who has access to art and who has access to art institutions? Basically it involves teenagers from precarious or popular areas, and it also tried to build a group of teenagers that not necessarily know each other in beforehand.”
At the moment, there is an increased awareness of representation of gender, sexual orientation, and cultural background within the whole field of art and culture. At the same time, there is still a major dominance of white middle class kids in all art education.
A paid summer job for the performing teenagers
The making of the choreography HORDE took shape as a paid summer job for nine teenagers between the age of 15 to 18, recruited in the Helsinki area. The project gives the young performing participants salaries according to union rates, competence, experience, and a network that will strengthen their knowledge of contemporary art today and stimulate talent and eagerness to potentially orientate themselves towards art as a profession.
The project started with a meeting and selection workshop with the youth. A few months later, during summer 2022, they had two workshops. After that Sofia Charifi, the local dancer, was working with them in September and October until they had another meeting.
“The Mobility funding is of course what makes it possible for us to be here more than once, and it’s very interesting to kind of build relations both to artists and organizations in the other Nordic countries because there are so many similarities in the field. That has been super fruitful for us.”, says Solveig.
During the course of the project, the choreographers saw a great development in the teenagers work process.
“We see a huge difference in how the teenagers work together, their confidence in performing, their confidence in taking up space, working together and talking about the work. This is also what me and Ingri aim for in this work, that they should build some kind of skills that could be fruitful in life at large.”, says Solveig.
Collaboration partners and financiers of the larger project entity were Helsinki Model, Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Norwegian-Finnish Cultural Foundation, Kiasma Theatre, Pihlajamäki youth center, Malmitalo, Arts Council Norway, FFUK, Oslo Kommune and Kulturtanken.
Find out more about Mobility funding and our other grant programmes and application deadlines here!
