On May 20th, ArtTable and Amsterdam Art are joining forces to present the symposium “What do we bring to the table?”
Calls from within the cultural sector emphasize the need to increase our resilience and flexibility to better adapt to the constant changes we face. More and more, we realize that we can only reach the necessary level of resilience through collaboration, as it opposes the individualistic, competitive and extractivist tendencies that we now recognize as the cause of our vulnerability. With the symposium ‘What do we bring to the table?’, we ask ourselves what skills, practices, methods and means we have that we use in our day-to-day work that contribute to the strength of the sector. What are the problems we face and which practices have we formulated in response? Can we create alliances to respond to some of these issues, or unite ourselves to demand change from other sectors when we can’t solve them ourselves?
This symposium will bring various (inter)national art practitioners together to engage in meaningful and practical conversations about what they have to give, providing an opportunity for collective solidarity to arise and for alliances to be formed. The symposium will be opened and led by Fatoş Üstek. She will enter into dialogue with Zoé Whitley, Zeynep Kubat, Sophie Mak-Schram and Jeanne van Heeswijk in a plenary panel discussion. This will be followed by interactive roundtable sessions, in which all participants are split in groups to exchange action-oriented strategies. By highlighting best practices and promoting reciprocity, the symposium strives for a strong, connected, and future-proof cultural field.
